Media Use/Production Diary

The above table shows my media usage from Wednesday the 1st of August to Friday the 10th. As it is evident from a first glance, one can see that my current use of media is dominated by the music category, not the highest in my viewership but most consistently high. This stems from my personal inability to succeed at most activities without some sort of melody amusing my subconscious, allowing ideas and creativity to flow more freely. Later in the week, I attended a live performance in Fortitude Valley to which I attribute the large spike of six hours on Thursday the 9th. I was slightly dissapointed to find out that only 27% of my classmates enjoy live music, I would encourage this to be alot higher. On the other side of the music spectrum, the end in which I produce music rather than listen to it, the period shows rather disappointing results; only dusting off the Bass guitar for four and a half hours over ten days. Excusably, however, this neglect for the beloved bottom end comes as the instrument suffers a slight string shortage. Exempt from the audio section of my media analysis is radio, as I have neither the interest nor patience to find the channels that don't emulate the annoying shock jock/sound gag DJ's that so chill my spine, therefore this form of media is totally neglected by this user, who keeps his car full of Cd's.

Fact: 7.2:1 the ratio of music listened to against music produced.

My Visual Media usage

The next form of media is the visual, one that conglomerates Television, Film, online Video and Video games. At right you can see all visual media divided into its elements. While others might prefer their news from television news, I prefer to creep through Youtube until devilishly late hours watching news items by The Young Turks, Al Jazeera or various other news channels. This outsourcing of information comes from a generational mistrust of evening news amongst my family, whom encourage independent journalism and maintain that many stories are much more intricate and complex than they are made to appear on television. Thus the twenty odd hours of television watched each week is a combination of sitcoms, drama, anime and other general entertainment. Whilst recording the data on television viewership I was surprised to find that I don't actually watch as much as I thought I did; oftentimes a day can slip by after just one episode of "Wilfred", though this is most likely attributed to increased social activity during the recorded period, however I am still viewing more TV that 77% of my classmates. Some weeks television might include very limited sports viewership such as Rugby Union, (a family occurrence in which a father and son yell into a phone at an absent umpire) however, recently I have been unable to watch games due to their broadcast being between 3-6am. Another formidable time-killer is my intense love of video games (A category that received a neat five hour bonus due a LAN party on the final day of recording). A quick escape from an intense day of University, a long battle with study or to simply kick back for 5 hours of Far Cry 2 with some old friends; Video games resonate with me as I see them as a method of escaping to a reality where the imagination is the limit of possibility, where possibilities are infinite and where you can run up buildings and throw helicopters into tanks. Lowest on the list of visual media is film, having only viewed two films in the past ten days. This is fairly normative as I often prefer the twenty minute format of television to long, often disengaging films, however this period has fostered a renewed trust in film after viewing The Dark Knight Rises on Friday and Empire of the Sun on Tuesday. As for visual production, there is little to be said; one sixteen second video of  Caligula's

The next Scorsese strikes again!

Horse, from the show in Fortitude Valley and a photo of the inside of my pocket (left) taken some hours later. I am not one who constantly records or captures holidays or events, instead I like to indulge myself in what is right in front of me, as there is a chance that it may never be so close again, and countless photographs couldn't possibly represent the sensory explosion of being completely enveloped in another culture or surrounded by rhythm and sound.

Finally, text media comprises the use of books, newspapers and online articles. Being fairly avid reader, these numbers come up fairly short of my expectation due to a lapse midweek in which I finished Mr. Wilde's Portrait of Dorian Grey and was charged with finding another classic to quench my thirst. In addition to Youtube, text media is my predominant means of gathering news and current affairs, with my preferred papers being the Courier Mail and the Australian (the best of a Murdoch situation) whilst various other international sources I view online (the New York Times, Al Jazeera, Huffington post). I prefer news in the form of text media as text advertisements are simply leaflets that don't require a sudden crazed hunt for the remote's mute button and can simply be passed over with a mindful eye. My Jour1111 cohort seems to be fairly differently minded as I am one of only 3.6% who receives most of their news from newspapers, and only 5.5% recieve news from Youtube. (Below right shows Journ1111 class' prefered news sources)
 My production of text media narrows down to university notes, general writing,(in which I have included my social media production) and songwriting. the former has seen me write for up about 7 hours, not that impressive for mid semester, however the other two categories were even more neglected: characterized by my lackluster attitude toward social media, the three posts on facebook and an email would never really excel me into the league of social media moguls. Suffering most was my production of personal literacy projects; on which one hour was spent in ten days. Perhaps over-socialisation (if such a phenomena exists) and an anti-motivational state of mind (still reeling from holidays) are to blame for such slack output.

So, thus ends the analysis of my media usage, set in a sporadic week of eventfulness and revelry. Hopefully this will prove helpful for reflection if I suddenly need to discover what I was doing whilst I should have been studying.

La Fine