Author: Dpadejski

When it comes to media usage, especially during the workweek, I am pretty boring. I barely have time to get ready in the mornings, and during the day I am bombarded with work or talking to my colleagues. I am also not on traditional social media such as Facebook, Twitter or Instagram. After work I only get a few hours of relaxation in before I am fighting to keep my eyes open, and the next thing I know it is the morning.

This last Friday was not much different. My media usage began once I got in the car for my commute to work. I like to listen to audiobooks during my drive because I get engaged in the story and forget about traffic. The audiobook I am currently listening to is Darknet by Matthew Mather, which is a techno thriller that so far is holding my interest. I prefer action and suspense for my driving audiobooks, so I tend to stick to thrillers, horror or science fiction. My favorites would be considered B Movies if they were made into films.

Once at work it is nose to the grindstone, so no media until lunch time. At that point I check my emails on my phone, and read a couple of articles on Queerty.com, which is a news and gossip site geared mostly toward gay men. The stories are usually about celebrities or politics, but the site has more in common with TMZ than CNN. I cannot say it is very reputable, but it is about all the news I can stand since it tends to make me depressed to hear about bleak topics such as war, murder and politics.

In the afternoon my workload eases up a bit, so I take that time to read some of the assigned articles for this class.  First, I read “General Principles in Media Literacy” by Patricia Aufderheide on the California Newsreel website. Next, I read “Fake news. It’s complicated.” by Claire Wardle on the First Draft website. I will admit that I do not know very much about California Newsreel or First Draft, but if I had to hazard a guess I would say that they are more reputable news sites than Queerty.

For my leisure time, I like to watch YouTube videos, especially ones that show people doing things like cooking, making art, crafts, or something else I usually would not see on television. My current favorites are videos with people cooking Korean street food. While I am watching YouTube, my partner enjoys watching game shows and true crime shows. These are going in the background, and I occasionally look over so I would count that as “watching” too. Last night it was “America Says” on the Game Show Network, followed by “48 Hours: Hard Evidence” on OWN. I would count true crime shows as having elements of the news, and this one was one of the better ones, along with “20/20” and “Dateline.”

Once I get sleepy, it is time to put on an audiobook and I usually fall asleep while listening. My preference of books for this are classic Sherlock Holmes or anything with a calm voice to help me relax. Last night it was Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion by Sam Harris. I got about 30 minutes of listening before falling asleep.

This is my first blog post as I am learning the options and features of WordPress.

I’m going to be honest. Going to school as an online student has really given me the perfect excuse to be on the internet A LOT. Not only am I an online student, but I’m an online student studying media and mass communications.

Media and plenty of communication… Facebook is basically studying. Right?

Maybe wrong.

My mornings start early, and I am definitely not an early person. Media isn’t a part of my morning routine while I am trying to get out the door to work, but it definitely is once I get in the car and start my commute. I’ve recently discovered a love for podcasts, so my morning drives for the past few months have all been started by listening to Crime Junkies  on Spotify.  Maybe an odd choice for starting your morning, but I really love listening to something that catches my attention and keeps me awake.

I’m currently working as a nanny for a 20-month old little girl, so often the second piece of media I consume every single day is what we refer to as, “The B-word”. The B-word stands for our beloved childhood classic, Barney and Friends. My charge is obsessed with him, so he often keeps the peace for me while I prepare our breakfasts. Thanks B-word.

After making breakfast for baby and coffee for me, I usually get some downtime to browse my social media accounts – Specifically, Facebook and Instagram. This browsing is usually done on my phone and pretty surface level, I don’t really click on any news stories or links to outside sources. I use this time to catch up on friends, families, and groups that I am a part of before I go on to consume any news bigger than my personal bubble. I do often see some local news headlines, and many of them on this day were centered around a pretty big snowfall we were projected to get later that evening.

Around noon is usually nap time, so this is where a lot of my media consumption takes place. I check my emails for anything that may pertain to work, school, finances, or orders I have placed, and then I browse emails from stores whose email list I subscribe to. On this day, I clicked on an email I received from Groupon and dream vacationed through some getaway deals  for awhile. From there I spent about an hour on Facebook, doing a lot of browsing but also interacting with several articles posted by friends and in groups that I am apart of.

In particular, an article that was posted on Medium regarding the ethics behind the thrift retailer Goodwill was being deeply discussed in a Facebook group I follow about sustainability. After reading the article regarding goodwill, I went on to read two articles also on Medium regarding someone’s experience with one year of microdosing and then an article about the possibility of Trump resigning in 2020. The last thing I did before nap time was up was check Hobby Lobby’s online advertisement to see if there were any good deals on crafts or activities to keep us busy for the week.

Throughout the rest of my workday I casually browse Facebook or Instagram once or twice, but mostly the only media I consume is Jack Johnson through the Alexa or Mickey and the Roadster Racers on Hulu. I also read a few Frozen books and a book about a school bus, but after that I go back to listening to Crime Junkies on my drive back home.

While cleaning up around the house and cooking dinner, I watch Dr. Phil, 20/20, and Super Nanny on Youtube. When we eat we watch a documentary on Netflix, and then I went on to play Luidgi’s Mansion on our Nintendo Switch for a bit after that. I checked our weather a few times that night on AccuWeather to keep up with the snow, but aside from that I didn’t consume any more news for the night.

I ended my night by reading a couple chapters from my textbook Race, Gender, Class, and Media : Studying Mass Communications and finishing up the Netflix documentary my boyfriend and I had started earlier in the evening. Although I often feel like media fills a lot of the empty space in my days, I realized that my day really doesn’t center around it. I also realized that I choose to avoid a lot of the more serious and hard hitting news articles and aim more to consume things that interest me.

If I were to rank the credibility of my media sources (1 being least trusted and 10 being most trusted), I would rank them as follows :

Facebook – 3

Local News Source (The Journal Times) – 8

Medium – 5

Youtube – 5

AccuWeather – 9

Facebook is low on the list in terms of credibility because while I do find a good portion of my news via Facebook, more often than not I see far more fake news than I do credible news. Being a student studying media I usually can brush past it quite easily, but I think that if I did not have the experience I do that it would be much more difficult for me to decipher which news is fact based and which is opinion based. Many of the titles on Facebook articles are extreme and “clickbaity”, focused much more on getting you to share the link due to it’s shock factor than it’s credible information.

Youtube and Medium are higher in terms of credibility but not by much, as still much of the information presented is opinion based rather than face based. I put my local news source at an 8 because they have been criticized before for having obvious bias in their articles, and they are not a place I look to if I am searching for completely fact based, true news articles. AccuWeather scored highest because it is the site I rely on the most for weather forecasts, and although they aren’t always completely right they are a pretty trustworthy source for your weather watching needs.

Overall, I think that I know where to find credible sources of information when I am in need of them, I just do not choose to consume a lot of news in my daily life. I found that consuming too much news brought me down, so I aim to consume media that I find enriching and informative in other ways, even if that is more so the opinions of others than it is statistics and research and scientific evidence.

As it all too often does, my day started with Twitter.

Scrolling through my Twitter timeline is not the best way to kick off the morning. I know this. But it is a great way to stall for ten minutes while I fantasize about cancelling everything on my schedule and never leaving my warm, comfortable bed.

For a long time, I used Twitter, in part, as a news aggregator. In 2020, for my own sanity, I’ve decided to try and separate the fun that can be had on social media from the anger and frustration often brought on by the news. As an experiment, I unfollowed or muted dozens of accounts a few weeks ago. While I still see some news or commentary on current events, my timeline is now mostly full of silly comments from friends, sports/entertainment content, great dogs, and a whole lot of Baby Yoda. It is bliss.

This is OJ. After safely evacuating, him and his family returned to their home in Wairewa, Australia yesterday to find it entirely destroyed by the fires. But amongst the rubble, OJ found his favorite toy had survived. 14/10 never letting it go again pic.twitter.com/gx3d0P5349

— WeRateDogs (@dog_rates) January 15, 2020

When I’m ready to know what’s going on in the world, I visit news sites directly. Over breakfast, I caught up on the previous day’s impeachment news and read brief profiles of the impeachment managers from NPR. I also enjoyed their list (and playlist) of 41 women who should be in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. From Wired, I learned that feral cats are making things worse in Australia. Linked in that article was an interesting video from CBS News about attempts to save endangered wallabies by airdropping food. I finished with a few stories about the Astros’ cheating scandal from The Athletic.

I didn’t interact with media again until lunchtime when I ate a salad with a side of Bon Appétit’s YouTube channel. I also checked Twitter again later in the afternoon.

Once I was free to unwind for the evening, I read a few more articles about impeachment, one about the potential illegality of withholding aid to Ukraine, and one explaining how we need to fix our recycling programs all from the New York Times. I also watched two episodes of Dollface on Hulu and listened to Apple Music.

My day ended like it started–with Twitter. I went to bed laughing at this attempt to explain the day’s baseball news via a clip from Mean Girls.

Of the news media I used, I consider NPR the most trustworthy. I am a longtime reader/listener who finds their content credible and informative. On a scale of 1 (least trusted) to 10 (most trusted), I give NPR a 10. Next up, both the New York Times and CBS News are a 9. These outlets have strong track records, though the Times has made some choices recently that I find frustrating. I give Wired and The Athletic an 8. Both do good work, but I only started subscribing within the past year and thus haven’t reached the same level of trust I have in other outlets. Lastly, I’d rank Twitter a 5. While there are plenty of credible people and organizations that share content on Twitter, there is also a lot of bad information to wade through.

Hello!

This is my first post.

I think I’ve got everything set up correctly and I’m ready to start blogging!

Hi, this is my first blog post.

I normally stick to a pretty strict social media schedule, since my daily routine is more often than not the same. Today, however, I had a lot of travelling to do which interrupted my routine. Normally, the first thing I check is Twitter. Today, though, the first form of media I used was the radio. In the car on the way to the airport I had the local radio station on, just listening to music and the occasional ad. 

Eventually, I head on over to Twitter. Considering I only slept for 3 hours, there is not really any new posts, so for the rest of the car ride and plane ride, I do not really use my phone except for music. 

Getting to the airport, I can finally see some new Tweets. I follow quite a bit of news sources, such as TIME, National Geographic, and BBC, I’ll click on a few news articles to stay updated with what’s going on. 

After Twitter, I check my Instagram. There isn’t much news here, it’s mostly just memes and celebrities, but that’s why I like Instagram. It keeps me distracted from everything going on in the world. 

I check Facebook next. Here is where I stay updated on all the Hollywood news, rather than important news. I hate this kind of news, but it’s somewhat of a guilty pleasure for me so I can’t help it. 

By now I’m in a rental car, on the way to the hotel. I’m exhausted, so I immediately fall asleep when I get in the car, there was no time for any sort of technology. When I get to the hotel, however, I’m ready for some TV. 

Before I get to watching any shows, I turn on the local news. I enjoy knowing what’s happening in the city where I’m staying. It keeps me informed and up to date. Plus, it’s always fun to compare a different city’s local news to my own. 

After relaxing for a bit, I go out and enjoy my vacation, so my media usage was practically zero. The next time I’m checking my phone is when I’m going to sleep. I start off with playing a game on my phone, but eventually end up over on Instagram for some laughs. I check Twitter for some news one last time, and before I know it I’m falling asleep. 

Out of all the news I consume, Twitter, or a local news channel, are the places I trust most to get it. This is because I follow actual news sources (with BBC being a personal favorite), so I’m seeing actual news. Whereas with Facebook, any news I see from there is shared by my friends from sources I’ve never even heard of. I would almost never trust Instagram for news, since I only go on there for memes and celebrities. 

We never realize how much we truly consume media, until we sit down and think about it. I realized today, how much I normally use my phone compared to when I’m busy doing stuff.