My Media Consumption
Tracking my media consumption certainly helped me to identify some trends in the way I look at the news. I noticed that I primarily read articles that I have found from social media and push notifications, which seem to be the easiest way to ensure a publisher can reach me. Much of my ‘path’ column is dedicated to Facebook, which makes sense — not only does Facebook show me content that it knows align with my liberal beliefs, but I surround myself with like-minded people, so I see my friends post many articles that I am interested in. However, I myself do not share much news on my own social media accounts. Of all the news I read, I only shared one story on a college friend’s Facebook timeline. I don’t tend to post comments or share, because I enjoy discussing the news in person or over the phone with a friend. I find that a lot gets lost in translation via internet comments, so I try to refrain.
Another key source of media for me was my push notification system on my smartphone. I used to merely read the notifications and move on, but I have recently been pushing myself to open up the articles and delve deeper into stories that interest me. That being said, I would estimate that I only opened up around 1 in 5 push notifications. I have 19 news apps on my phone, taking up an entire ‘page’ of my apps. Of these apps, I pay for subscriptions to “The New York Times,” “The Washington Post,” and “The LA Times.” Lucky for me, my parents are avid consumers of news, so I have shared these accounts with them for several years. I wouldn’t say that I expect all my news to be free. I certainly love that much of my news is readily available online, but I appreciate the depth and quality of reporting in my subscription based news services. Perhaps if I were not in journalism school, this would not be such a priority to me.
The content of the media I consumed did not surprise me. It was primarily focused on entertainment and politics. I had a tendency to read several articles about the same topic — I will admit, several of the articles I read provided analysis on this week’s episode of “The Bachelor.” On the other hand, I was absolutely enthralled with the confirmation hearing for Betsy DeVos, and visited at least 15 different websites to watch videos and read commentary about her hearing.
I think I consumed more media in the past two days than I normally would — roughly four and a half hours. I do not have class on Tuesdays, and unfortunately came down with food poisoning on Tuesday night/Wednesday morning, which gave me no choice but to sit in bed all day and read the news. I did find it interesting that none of my news was consumed on television, despite the fact that I have always had a great interest in broadcast media. Perhaps this is reflective of my recent inclination that I may prefer to pursue a career in online video media, as opposed to television broadcast. Overall, my consumption log was relatively consistent with what I would expect of myself, but it helped me to identify several trends in my own interaction with media.
