Media Use Diary and Analysis

Date	Medium	How long	What
12/3/12	Computer	1:00pm – 2:00pm	Facebook, YouTube
	Computer	5:30pm – 7:00pm	Facebook, YouTube
Summary: Used Facebook for general chatting to friends. Looked at a few links related to bands from the content on there and read news stories I was linked to. YouTube was just used for listening to music
13/3/12	Computer	1:45am – 2:00am	Facebook
	Newspaper	3:10pm – 3:30pm	The Australian
	Computer	4:00pm – 6:00pm	Facebook, YouTube
	Computer	11:20pm – 11:50pm	Facebook
Summary: Used Facebook to contact friends. Entered a competition by sharing a link. Read linked news articles. Read The Australian in the doctor’s waiting room.
14/3/12	Computer	8:15am – 8:40am	Facebook, YouTube
	Computer	1:00pm – 1:40pm	Facebook, YouTube
	Computer	3:30pm – 4:00pm	Facebook
	Computer	4:30	Blog
Summary: Watched a vlog on YouTube. News related links through Facebook. Uploaded blog
15/3/12	Magazine	9:20am – 10:00am	Time Magazine
	Computer	11:00am – 12:00pm	Facebook
	Computer	2:20pm	Blog
	Computer	4:30pm – 6:00pm	Facebook, News
Summary: Set homepage to News.com.au. The Time Magazine was out of date. Blog uploaded
16/3/12	Computer	10:20am – 12:30pm	Facebook, YouTube
Summary: Very standard use
17/3/12	Computer	3:30am – 3:40am	Facebook
	Computer	6:00pm – 7:00pm	Facebook, YouTube
Summary: YouTube used for music
18/3/12	Computer	10:00am – 12:30pm	Facebook, YouTube, News, Music news
Summary: Read large quantities of music news. Internet data ran out, impossible to use.
19/3/12	-	-	-
Summary: No internet
20/3/12	-	-	-
Summary: Still no internet….
21/3/12	Computer	3:15pm – 4:00pm	Facebook
Summary: Used a friends computer to check my Facebook

,

My media usage is currently defined almost entirely by my living circumstances. As I live at college on 

campus I have minimal access to television, no commute during which to listen to the radio and no newspapers or magazines around so, quite simply, I go without these traditional forms of media, as demonstrated in my media diary. It is worth noting that newspapers, television and radio are sources of news for 51.6%, 71.1% and 39.1% of surveyed students respectively, placing me in a minority but at the same time I doubt that these students share my living circumstances. In place of these old media I have a high reliance on modern media, namely the internet. Of my total media usage logged 965 minutes were spent on new media, opposed to 60 minutes on old media (which occurred entirely in waiting rooms). Ignoring the two days during which I had no media use (discussed later) I spent an average of 2 hours on the internet daily. 

Starting from the 19^th there is a notable absence of any media use due to my internet data quota running out. To say I had no interaction with media during this time would be untrue as it is impossible as, in day to day life, you are exposed to media from outside sources, but during this period I set aside no time for media usage. This dry patch was broken on day 10 when I began to suffer severe Facebook deprivation and went out of my way to use a friend’s internet so I’d be able to check my ‘wall’. This is somewhat understandable as Facebook was my dominant form of media during the diarised period which seems to be fairly standard considering the 91.9% of the surveyed students stated that Facebook was where they spent most of their time online. 

For a final graph I wanted to create a pie chart of how I divided my time amongst various forms of media but as I began to create my diary it soon became evident that it would be impossible. There was almost no point during which I was engaged in only one form of media whilst online. During a standard session I would log onto Facebook whenever I wasn’t doing work on the computer and begin chatting, at this same time I would also be listening to music, navigating links of interest from Facebook and searching through YouTube videos. Attempting to separate the different uses would be futile. I feel this is backed up by the fact there were 2292 responses to “what do you spend most your time online doing” meaning that each person voted on average 5.3 times. In contrast, during the both periods I was using ‘old media’ I was engaged in only one form.

From these points I can create a couple of hypotheses. Firstly a person’s media use is largely reliant on their environment and access to different media mediums. Secondly, and more importantly, is that new media is interacted with in multiple ways at the same time. It is possible that in the future more and more forms of media will be accessible together.

Overall, when compared to the survey results of my peers, it can be seen that during the recorded period my relationship with journalism and communication was an unusual and stilted one. My reliance on modern media separated me from the norm and even then the fact I don’t use twitter, etc, or a smart phone meant that there was comparatively little media in my day to day life.