Media Use Diary

Journalism and communication has started to see a shift from the use of old media, namely newspapers, magazines, radio and television, to new media, which revolves around the internet. As such, media platforms have had to change from traditional forms to online ones. The rise of new media usage is the topic of this dossier.

I logged my media usage for ten days (figure 1.0), and then compared it to the results of the survey.

Figure 1.0

The majority of media used was online, with online news and Facebook having the highest total time. Blogging, magazines and television were also used a lot, though their time was nearly half of that seen for Facebook.

This preference for new media was not seen in the survey results however. In the survey, more old media was used than new media (figure 2.0). This conflicts in comparison to my media usage (figure 3.0), where it can be seen that new media was used more.

Figure 2.0

Figure 3.0

While these results indicate that I use a much higher amount of new media than average, the time I spent online each day was significantly less than that seen in the survey. I spent approximately 45 minutes online each day, whereas the average was 1-3 hours. Also, television was the main way people got their news, whereas my main form of news was online newspapers.

These differences could be attributed to the fact that online platforms are easier for me to access than other media forms. Online news made up the biggest percentage of my media use, followed by Facebook, another easily accessed form. These results do have some similarities with the survey results however, as the second biggest source of news was online newspapers, and 91.1% of the time people spent online was on Facebook. My media usage, therefore, does have some similarities with the survey.

Figure 4.0

Usage versus producage was created with web 2.0. Produsage can be defined as:

“…the collaborative, iterative, and user-led production of content by participants in a hybrid user-producer, or produser role.” (Bruns, 2005).

Approximately 22% of my interaction with media was producage, as can be seen in figure 4.0. This included Facebook posts, tweets, and blogging. In regards to the survey results, while it is hard to determine exactly when people use and produce media, the fact that 97.2% of individuals have one or more Facebook accounts, 32.3% use Twitter and 41.4% have blogs indicates produsage. These statistics show that produsage is becoming a big part of media, and therefore journalism, with individuals being able to participate in media production.

These trends indicate that the way people use media is changing, with new media forms and produsers affecting media consumption and production. In regards to my media usage, it can be seen that my relationship with journalism is mostly in new media, and that I not only use but also produse. This indicates that generally, media is starting to encompass new forms, and that people are engaging with them in new ways. 

References

Bruns, A. (2005). Towards Produsage: Futures for User-Led Content Production. [available online] http://snurb.info/files/12132812018_towards_produsage_0.pdf last accessed: 29/03/12