Ten Days in the Media: The Diary of a Prod-User

As a science student there’s nothing that excites me quite as much as data analysis, and what a wonderful excuse this is to do exactly that. This media Use Diary provides a comprehensive analyses the way that I interact with the media compared to other aspiring journalists in my cohort, looking into how much I contribute versus how much I take from the media and the degree to which the new media dominates my engagement with journalism and communication. Essentially, I will be used as an example to demonstrate ‘prod-usership’ in the new media, defined as “modes of production which are led by users or at least crucially involve users as producers” whereby “the user acts as a hybrid user/producer, or produser, virtually throughout the production process” (Axel Brun, 2006*). Hopefully by the end of this analysis I will take away some important lessons about my interaction with the media. 

The raw data 

The above table represents the total number of minutes that I spent interacting with different media platforms over ten days, coming to a grand total of almost thirty hours. This information is illustrated in graph 1, which represents the division of that time between different media platforms. Four major media platforms make up more than half of the media that I use; Facebook, Twitter, Blogging sites and Youtube.

Facebook

Granted, I have a problem. Over a third of all the media that I interact with is done on this single website. So what’s so special about Facebook? Like many other Facebook users, I use the site to see what is happening within my network of friends and acquaintances, all from the solitary comfort of my computer chair. Most of my time is spent on chat with friends and family. As a teenager I sub-consciously value being socially active more than I value my own life (not to mention my grades) and as a result I end up spending copious amounts of time aimlessly reading what people are up to, where they were last night and who is in a relationship with who. It’s a bit like an interactive soap-opera.

From the perspective of Journalism and Communication, Facebook’s most important feature is the ability to build and sustain social networks. However, news distributed via Facebook (similar to the way news is broadcasted through Twitter) is a growing trend, especially with the advent of the page ‘Facebook + Journalists’. Let’s face it though, engaging with the work of professional journalists is not the reason I use this site. 

Twitter

Before I started this course I did not have a Twitter account. As graph 1 illustrates, it didn’t take me long to get the hang of this new media and now it constitutes 10% of all the media that I use. I am now officially a twit, and I am proud of that fact. Unlike Facebook, I don’t use Twitter for social purposes. I use it as a major news source, and as such I am a ‘lurker’ with a grand total of one tweet. In my opinion, Twitter is the most useful website to any journalist; it provides a constant flow of current news from as many quality sources as you are willing to subscribe to, and also allows the user to build a network of sources. This is a site that I enjoy using, and one that I would like to use even more as my career in journalism progresses. 

Blogging Sites

I have enjoyed reading blogs for a long time, but actually writing a blog was entirely new for me. I find myself reading other blogs and writing my own in half-hour sessions about three times per week. This leads to blogging sites making up around10% of the media that I interact with. I can certainly see myself spending even more time on blog sites in the future. These sites encourage creativity, develop writing skills and allow writers to specialise in writing for niche audiences.

Youtube

I use Youtube for a variety of purposes. First and foremost, I use it to view the latest work of my favourite vloggers, which include comedians, entertainers, reviews and science and technology vlogs. Occasionally I will use Youtube as a news source if a big story has recently broken. Overall this makes up around 11% of the media that I interact with. Some science vlogs (Scishow, for example) have proven helpful in writing my own blog, and as such Youtube represents an important platform to interact with from a journalist's perspective. 

Am I normal?

With this data in mind, I can compare myself to trends seen with other journalism students. 

Like 94.7% of my peers, I had just one Facebook account. Some comfort came in the fact that I am among the 91.9% who spend most of their browsing time on Facebook, and within the 29.6% who spend between one and three hours on the internet per day (personally, I recorded a mean of 2.4 hours per day). Perhaps my apparent addiction isn’t so bad after all. My internet usage was fairly similar to that of others, the main differences being that I tend to use Twitter more, I rarely use Skype or banking sites, and I spend far less time emailing than other people do. Like most others I listen to less than one hour of radio each day - usually when driving. In many regards I am quite normal indeed.

However, unlike myself, a third of the cohort own an internet-enabled smart phone and had been using Twitter and Blogger before this course evens. This suggests to some degree that I am already behind in regard to modern trends in the new media. 

Furthermore, it can be seen that I use old media (television, for example) far less than most other people do. The total amount of time that I spent watching TV over ten days was significantly less than what most people watch in a single night. This is likely the case for two reasons. Firstly, television was the chief source of news for most people, while I primarily use online sources like Twitter and online news sites. Secondly, I watch most television shows via the internet; a significant 7% of my time was spent watching TV online. Clearly  my ignorance of television-based news journalism is unusual. Oh dear. 

Old Media vs. New Media

The rise of the new media under web 2.0 is a major issue in journalism and communication, so I thought this would be a good opportunity to look at which media platforms I engage with more often. 

Graph 2 very clearly shows that I rely heavily on new media platforms. Old media made up just 10% of the media that I used. This is evidently a consequence of the fact that the services originally provided by old media platforms are now available on the web. In my case, I now rely entirely on the internet as a source for television, newspapers and information for research.  According to the recorded data, most other people are similar to me in this regard. Both the exponential growth of the new media and the subsequent decline of the old media are here demonstrated. 

Production vs. Consumption

Prod-users make the internet what it is today, but not everyone produces as much as they consume. This was the case for me; graph 3 shows that I use twice as much media as I produce. 

The data for this graph is based on the estimations of how much content I produce on different platforms. On sites like Facebook and Blogger I spend more time contributing to the media (using chat, posting comments or writing blogs), while I spend more time using the information put out by Youtube, Twitter and news websites. It is clear that in many regards I am a ‘lurker’, using a variety of media platforms without contributing anything to the discussions that they host. 

Conclusions and lessons learnt

 There are some broad observable trends that give an overall indication of the way that I use the media and how I compare to others. With this in mind, I can identify ways to best use the media to improve my skills as a journalist.

Firstly, like my peers, I tend to use the media primarily for social networking and entertainment (demonstrated by my extensive use of Facebook and Youtube). While both these sites are good platforms for modern journalism, Twitter, Blogger and news sites are established hubs for the work of quality journalists to be published, questioned and responded to. As an aspiring journalist, my media usage should be focused around sites like these as opposed to entertainment-based and social websites.

Secondly, I am a new media addict. Even if many areas of the media are rapidly moving online, professional journalism thrives on the hundreds of TV channels and radio stations being broadcasted every minute, and the thousands of newspapers and magazines published each week. The more I use online media, the less I experience the traditional forms of journalism that still play an important role in our society.

Finally, I should produce a greater amount of content for the media. Looking at other journalism students, about one third have been blogging and tweeting extensively before this course even began. I am not going to improve my skills in journalism simply by reading the work of others. Anyone can be a prod-user, but journalists are required to put an emphasis on production. This will undoubtedly become easier with mobile connection to online media via a smart phone – a tool that most of my fellow students are well trained at using.  

To sum up, my use of the media reflects both the movement of journalism and communication online and the rise of prod-usership. By comparing my usage to that of other students, I learned important lessons about which key areas of the media I should be using to better myself as a journalist.

* accessed at www.snurb.info/produsage