The following is an example of my typical media use in a 24 hour period, which is mostly spent as a consumer in the digital world.
The first thing I check in the morning is my phone to make sure I have no missed messages, phone calls, or voicemails. Then, I usually send a, “good morning,” text to my girlfriend and our conversation will be consistent throughout the day.
After checking my phone messages, I head downstairs to hop on to http://my.asu.edu to see what work I must get done for the day. This particular day I checked the blogging assignment due for the week, and then continued to read each of my professors’, Dan Gillmor and Kristy Kroschke, blog examples of their daily media use.
An hour or so later, I checked my Twitter app from my phone and read some comedic tweets, favoriting a few that I thought were especially hilarious. These tweets usually come from comedians or YouTubers that I follow, rather than retweets from other people.
After I checked Twitter, I decided to relax and watch some television. Once again, I was watching shows that involved comedy and not as much news or drama.
During the time I spent watching T.V. I also posted a video to my Instagram story of one of my close friends that happened to come over a few minutes prior. Some of my followers replied to the video saying it was funny, and I replied back to a few saying something like, “I know right,” or double tapping on their comment to, “like,” it.
Once I finished up replying to some people, I decided to head onto the YouTube app via my Playstation 4. I watched a few more funny videos with my friend, before we decided to just put some regular television on.
My friend had to leave shortly after, so I was left watching Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift. I’ve never actually seen that movie, so I decided to finish watching it.
While the movie was on, I opened the Twitter app again to see if there was any interesting news.
A few seconds of scrolling led me to a retweet of an LA Times article about Liz Warren denying Bernie a handshake. I decided to give the article a read, as well as the replies to the tweet itself. In all honesty, the article seemed a little pointless in my opinion, and could be causing a commotion over nothing, but everyone has there own views and I suggest you read the article I linked above and form your own thoughts rather than taking my word for it.
After reading that article, I stumbled across another tweet that linked a video showing a massive rainfall in Australia. The person who had tweeted the video had added a no source quote stating how much rain Australia has received in the last few hours. I was a bit skeptical about the accuracy or where that quote was even coming from, so I clicked on the tweet to see were the original video was posted, and was eventually led here. As you can see the original video was posted by a verified news presenter for 9 News Australia. I decided to retweet the Australian news presenter’s tweet about how much rainfall Melbourne had received, since it seemed to be straight from the source.
Once I finished up on Twitter, I decided to hop back on YouTube to see if there was anything entertaining to watch. When I hopped on the app, the politics section showed breaking news footage of the senate passing the USMCA deal. It was only a short 40 second video, but it was enough to spark my curiosity into understanding further what the USMCA deal was exactly.
I conducted a quick Google search on the term USMCA, and decided to further research the bill on congress.gov. It actually allowed me to view the bill and I was able to learn more about it. Once I had figured out more detail on the USMCA, I decided to try and figure out what results will come from it. I found an article on politifact.com that explained why democrats have been supporting the bill, and gave me better reasoning on why it so easily passed by the senate.
Later in the day, like most days, I finish up my media use by watching some T.V. on one of my many streaming services(Netflix, Hulu, Playstation Vue, YouTube TV). Usually it will be live T.V. via Playstation 4. Finally when I get sleepy enough, I hop into bed and usually fall asleep to whatever show I’m watching, which is cartoons most of the time.
I’ve noticed that I am a complete consumer of digital media, and less of a curator. I want to change that this year, and become a user who tries to share as much as they consume.
Media Source Rankings
Here are the media sources I viewed, how I rank them in credibility and why:
- My.asu.edu: (10)This is the student home page for Arizona State University, so this is one of my most trusted places to find sources for information. This is usually a spot where links and stories posted here have been verified and not spread misinformation.
- Twitter: (6) Twitter is an interesting place for information because it can be useful due to its instantaneous spread of information and also the ability to give voices to people from all over the world. You can learn about real time incidents happening across the world and hear from people involved in it, rather than a news curator. The downside, which is why I rated it a 6, is that people can post whatever they want on Twitter, and it’s up to the other users to fact-check or verify what this person is sharing is true. If done correctly it can be used to acquire a lot of interesting information, but if not misinformation can spread like wildfire.
- Television: (5) Television is a great way to find information since you can tune into a news channel reporting on events of the day and hear opinions from people directly involved. The issue I have with T.V. is that each news channel is usually biased towards a certain viewpoint. Also, Television involves visual communication more than anything else, so sometimes News channels will report on a more visually pleasing event, such as a car chase, rather than something that is not as entertaining to the eye.
- Instagram: (4) I never get any of my information from Instagram. Instagram, in my opinion, has no checks and balances when it comes to information that people share. As long as the image is not offensive, it usually doesn’t get taken down. Instagram is completely visual, so I feel that important information isn’t shared there too often. It’s really hard to have a back and forth conversation with one person on that platform, so sharing information on politics or anything else that would spark conversation through multiple users would be difficult as well.
- Congress.gov: (10) This website is published by the Library of Congress, so this is a pretty credible source when reading anything that has to do with legislation. If someone wanted to know more information, I would highly suggest this.
- Politifact.com: (10): This website is now owned by The Poynter Institute, a nonprofit for Journalists. I believe the move to Poynter institute has now given this site more credibility since a nonprofit is not influenced by a political party, they can report truthfully and without biased. This is a great place to check during debates to see what statements made might be true or false.
