Personal Media Use and Production Diary - Assignment 1

The use of media and its many platforms changes constantly. My personal media usage is influenced by both general patterns and outside events, evident in a Personal Media Use and Production Diary recorded over a period of 10 days - 5th August - 15th August, 2012.

Figure 1 Indicates the average amount of time I spend on different media platforms per day. Since starting Journalism at UQ, my use of social media (specifically blogger and twitter) has increased. Although I spend time on blogger as part of assessment, I have placed it under 'Social Networking/ Personal Interest' due to the enjoyment I get from blogging. I was surprised to see that the total amount of time I spend on the internet (in comparison to the survey average - see Figure 2) is higher. However, my internet average is a combined total of all sites I visit, some of which are opened simultaneously. During this 10 day period, the amount of television I usually watch has significantly increased due to the Olympics. On a more regular basis, my general television intake would be less than half an hour a day. In comparison to the amount of time spent watching television in regards to the Media Survey conducted (see Figure 2), normally, I would watch less than the average amount of television (average is 90 minutes). 

In all honesty, I thought the amount of time people spent watching television would be higher - especially with the amount of advertised television shows on mainstream commercial stations. Although I still feel that an hour and a half of television (on average) is quite a lot of television per day. 

What  I also found interesting - however not entirely surprising, was where people get their news from. This brings us to the much debated topic of 'is new media the death of old media?' 

Figure 5

Figure 4

The top four distributors of news (according to survey results) are online newspapers, TV, Facebook and radio. Coming in at number five, is the newspaper. When comparing new and old media (see Figure 4), online news is seen to by 38.2% more than those who read newspapers. If I may, I am going to quickly refer back to Lecture 1 where we talked about the introduction of the Paywall. My question is - would online news still be as popular a source if one had to pay? - Moving on. I read the majority of my news in the paper, however, since starting journalism and joining twitter, by following news accounts, I have been presented with news in an entirely new means of news broadcasting. 

Speaking of Social Networking, I recorded the amount of time I spent on each of the following sites per day. As you can see, represented in Blue, Facebook consumed/ still consumes a great part of my life. Sad, I know. However, I am pleased to see Blogger come in at second - considering it is assessment. 

In conclusion, it is safe to say my media usage is significantly influenced by both outside events and traditional patterns. On a normal day, I fit in nicely with the rest of the people my age (in regards to the survey). In studying Journalism, it would be impossible for me to say that my media usage will decrease and that from here on in, I can only expect it to sky rocket as media and its many platforms progress.

Below is my Personal Media Use and Production Diary: