Media in Your Life Explain in detail your method of collecting media usage data for the week. Did you keep a small notepad with you at all times? Did record your activity on your

NAME: Aakash Anand Lulla

Media Journal

January 23 – 27, 2017

16 – EMED 1011: Media in Your Life

Methodology

I decided not to keep track of my media consumption on my cell phone since I believe it would distract me and not let me fully ingest the media I consume which could result in accuracies in the journal. Therefore, I have decided to keep an empty sticky note on my laptop screen every day in order to keep track of my media consumption since I tend to open my laptop screen approximately 4-5 times in a day. I think that seeing the empty sticky note on my desktop screen will remind me to fill in the information before I forget to. I decided not to keep track of my media consumption on my cell phone since I believe it would distract me and not let me fully ingest the media I consume which could result in accuracies in the journal.

In order to get an accurate measure of my media consumption I have decided to write down the amount of time I have spent consuming media as soon as I open my laptop and before I shut it as well so that I get accurate readings of the time I spend consuming media on my laptop which would otherwise be difficult to approximate. I will also make bullet points regarding media that I can recollect consuming while writing it down on the sticky note so that I can write down the specific media topics I found interesting during the day.

I believe the greatest difficulty I will face in recording my media consumption is redundancy for audio and video consumption. A lot of videos tend to include audio content as well and therefore there may be in accuracies in measuring the amount of time spent consuming audio and video media. Another difficulty in recording my media consumption will be recording the time of the specific media used during media multitasking for similar reasons.

Monday, January 23rd

Media Use

Video 1 hour 30 minutes

Audio 3 hour

Internet 7 hours

Cell phone 40 minutes talk, 90 texts

Video games 0 hours

_______________________________________________________________________

Total Hours Using Media 12 hours 15 minutes

Commentary and Analysis

On Monday’s I have an exhausting schedule to keep up with. I end up listening to a lot of music on Spotify walking to and fro from my classes. I believe that listening to music helps me rewire myself before and after my lessons and it also helps me educate myself as a songwriter.

Since I am an international student I spend some of my free time in the mornings and nights speaking with my family back home in India.

that I media multitasked a lot today as I sent texts to people while listening to music or watching something on YouTube. I also occasionally checked my social media accounts while facetiming with my family and friends since I find it simple to do so.

I believe that most of the time I spend on the internet is through my smart phone. I checked my Facebook newsfeed around 12 times today just because to entertain myself whenever I got bored. Additionally, I checked my Instagram feed quite often as well since it allows me to see what my friends from different parts of the world are up to and therefore makes me feel more a part of their lives.

One piece of media that stood out to me today was an article published by Buzzfeed India. The article was about 18 things nobody ever warns you about when you move out of India and I found the contents of the article to be highly accurate. Buzzfeed India is my favorite news media outlet of all time.

Tuesday, January 24th

Media Use

Video 1 hour

Audio 2 hours 30 minutes

Internet 3 hours

Cell phone 112 minutes talk, 68 texts

Video games 0 hours

_______________________________________________________________________

Total Hours Using Media 8 hours 30 minutes

Commentary and Analysis

Today I did not make as much use of media consumption as I usually do. I ended up sleeping at 3:30am as I had an assignment to submit by the evening and wanted to get it over with. I woke up at around 11:30am and I was able to do so since my first class was at 3:30pm. I ended up spending 10 minutes after I woke up going through my social media newsfeed and notifications as I usually do every morning.

I spent a lot of time on FaceTime with my family after I woke up and then got ready to go for lunch. While walking towards the Tangeman University Centre I listened to about 20 minutes of Drake’s old music because I felt like preparing myself for his new album that’s meant to release pretty soon.

I did not spend much time today on Facebook or Instagram since I did not have enough free time to do so. I had class assignments to work on and media multitasked by listening to music while completing my class assignments.

One piece of media that grabbed my attention today was an article about how President Donald Trump had a successful telephone conversation with the Indian Prime Minister. The article stated that President Trump wants to strengthen ties with India and that both the leaders want to work together to combat terrorism. In the article it was stated that President Trump also admires and respects Prime Minister Modi for what he is doing for India. I found this interesting because up until this point I had my concerns about Trumps Presidency, however, knowing that he wants to work together and strengthen relations with India is slightly helped reshape my opinion about him.

Wednesday, January 25th

Media Use

Video 45 minutes

Audio 1 hours 30 minutes

Internet 5 hours

Cell phone 54 minutes talk, 48 texts

Video games 0 hours

_______________________________________________________________________

Total Hours Using Media 7 hours 45 minutes

Commentary and Analysis

My schedule on Wednesdays is extremely packed with classes from 9am to 9pm. I listened to some music by The Passenger during my commutes to different classes. I did not have enough time to visit my social media accounts very often due to my packed schedule but spent a lot of time in lessons on the internet as I had to for some of my lessons.

I find The Passenger’s music very peaceful and it helped me relax myself before my lessons so that I could clear my head and concentrate during lessons.

I did not media multi-task often today since I had to walk and talk to my family friends on the phone instead of sitting and talking to them as I usually do.

One piece of media that caught my attention was a video a friend of mine shared on Facebook about Dubai. Although I am from India, I went to high school in Dubai and the video was about a person’s favorite spots in Dubai and it made me a little nostalgic because a lot of the spots in the video were also my favorite spots in Dubai. The song used in the video was a song called ‘Feels like Home’ by The Him and I believe that the song helped increased the videos emotional appeal to me to a large extent too because of the lyrics.

Thursday, January 26th

Media Use

Video 2 hours

Audio 3 hours

Internet 8 hours

Cell phone 88 minutes talk, 63 texts

Video games 0 hours

_______________________________________________________________________

Total Hours Using Media 14 hours 40 minutes

Commentary and Analysis

Since I have a packed schedule on Wednesdays, my Thursdays are completely free. I was therefore able to spend more time on different devices and access different media throughout the day. I watched quite a few videos on YouTube since I woke up. I mainly watched videos of Ed Sheeran’s live performances and some videos of Trevor Noah from The Daily Show about the Trump Administration.

I believe that the reason I watched videos of Ed Sheeran’s live performances is because I find it interesting how he manages to be a one-man-band in front of 80,000 people. I had a 2-hour work out at the rec centre today and that’s how I managed to listen a lot of music today as well. I listened to electronic dance music while running since I believe the lead up to the beat drops are very good motivators to push myself further while running.

After my workout I spent the rest of my day speaking with friends or family and finishing homework. I believe that it wasn’t difficult for me to media multitask while speaking with people and doing homework. In fact, I think it made it easier to finish my homework since speaking with someone helped me keep my mind awake and I was able to get a lot of work done while I was on FaceTime.

I spent some of my time today on Facebook as well. There was a lot of interesting news on my newsfeed today but the one that caught my attention the most was one about how President Trump plans to implement a 20% import tax on Mexican goods to pay for his Mexican wall. The article got me thinking about how Mexico might react to this since they export a lot of their products to the American market and it could affect their economy to a very large extent.

Friday, January 27th

Media Use

Video 2 hours

Audio 5 hours

Internet 5 hours

Cell phone 42 minutes talk, 91 texts

Video games 0 hours

_______________________________________________________________________

Total Hours Using Media 12 hours 50 minutes

Commentary and Analysis

I spent a lot of my time today listening to music since my class load isn’t very bad on Fridays and I was also looking forward to the weekend. I listened to a lot of music by DNCE today as I will be attending their concert at Bogart’s this Wednesday. I believe I did this because I wanted to memorize all the lyrics exactly so I can sing along to every song they play at the show and try my best not to lose my voice.

Since I had some free time today and a weekend to look forward to, I decided to start watching a new TV show on Amazon Prime Video since I am already a Prime member. It was difficult for me to decide initially which show to start watching since the website displays as much media as it possibly can on one screen. However, after a few minutes of navigating the web page I decided to watch The Grand Tour because I used to love watching Top Gear when I was a child and was curious to see what the new show was like.

It was easy for me media-multitask by watching The Grand Tour and going through my social media feed. There were times where I had to turn my head up from my phone screen to my computer screen to see the beastly cars they were displaying every now and then. Apart from that I did not media multitask much.

The piece of media that stood out the most to me today was a video that I stumbled upon in my Facebook newsfeed. The video showed a robot beat the “I am not a robot” captcha test that they tend to have on a lot of websites. I found the video hilarious because it always bothers me when I have to check the “I am not a robot” box on any website and I never thought I’d see the day that a robot actually figured out how to check that one box.

Statistical Summary for the Week

Total Hours of Week

Video 7.2 Audio 15 Internet 28 Cell Phone 5.8 (360 texts) Video Games 0 Total Hours 56

12.8%

26.7%

50%

10.5%

DISTRIBUTION OF MEDIA USAGE FOR THE WEEK

Video Audio Internet Cell Phone

Concluding Remarks

I believe that the process of actively monitoring my media consumption has really made me more aware of my media consumption and how much time I spend consuming information, that is, for the most part unrelated to my life. Monitoring my media usage has not made much of a difference to my normal routine. I tried to make sure I wasn’t changing my habits as I wanted to gain an as accurate result as I possibly could from this assignment for my own self-improvement and benefit. I think that this assignment will have some difference on the amount of media I consume, however, I believe that as a millennial I need to keep myself updated about events that are happening around the world today. Whether it be something as irrelevant as a meme or something as serious as an executive order from a President. I believe that being aware of such events taking place in the world of electronic media will allow me to grow as a person as it allows me to keep formulating and reformulating my own educated opinions on different topics and therefore helps me solidify who I am in a certain way.

The reason I believe that I will begin to reduce the amount of media I consume is because I was surprised by the amount of time I spent consuming media during this assignment. I consumed over 2 days’ worth of media within 5 days which I believe is definitely too much information in such a small amount of time. Therefore, I do believe this assignment will have a lasting impact on my future media use as I believe that there are a lot of health hazards that could take place if I continue to consume this much media within a week. I hope to force myself into doing other healthier activities such as playing sports and going back to the rudimentary methods of information consumption through newspapers and physical books.