Category: students

Thursday, January 16th, I woke up earlier than usual (about 6AM) to meet my parents for breakfast before work. I typically wake up with just enough time to get ready before I have to leave the house, so like usual, I had no spare time to browse the web or read the news before I was out the door.

At the breakfast table my mom had her phone out, telling me about the latest gossip she read on Facebook. My dad was scrolling through his Instagram feed to show me a picture my grandmother posted of her new garden. I don’t use my phone when I’m eating with others, so I engaged my parents in conversation to pass the time as we ate. Once we finished breakfast & I was on my way to work.

I work at Barnes & Noble, your typical fast-paced retail job. I get to work at 8:45AM, 15 minutes before my shift starts. I sat in the back office & started scrolling through Twitter. Rarely do I browse Twitter Moments or Trending Tags, I usually keep to my own timeline on Twitter. I saw a few linked news articles that I bookmarked to read later & then put my phone away to start my shift.

Time really got away from me at work so I ended up taking my lunch & my first break back to back. So around 2PM I grabbed my phone & opened Twitter back up to read the articles I had bookmarked. One of the links took me to an article from The New York Times & the other took me to article from Slate. Both covered political news regarding Trump’s impeachment & I found myself a little uninterested so I ended up only quickly scanning them. I spent the remaining 30 minutes of my lunch reading a book.

The real media consumption didn’t start until I was home from work at 6PM. I opened up my laptop, quickly checked if I had ASU assignments to be done & then I immediately clicked to YouTube from my bookmarks bar. I opened up a filmed podcast I’d been meaning to listen to & started making dinner. I sat down to eat & as the podcast was going I simultaneously began to scroll through Twitter, this time on my laptop in a separate tab. I clicked between my Twitter & YouTube tabs for about an hour & a half before cleaning up & sitting on the couch to watch Jeopardy on television. After Jeopardy I started up Disney+ & watched the last 2 episode of The Mandalorian. While I was watching, a friend texted me a link to a silly Buzzfeed article on puns which I clicked on but couldn’t open because it required the Apple News app which I had removed from my phone. After The Mandalorian season finale I got up to take a shower & get ready for bed. I listened to music downloaded onto my laptop during the process.

Once in bed I try to avoid screen time so I opened up a book & read until I was too tired to keep my eyes open any longer.

Most of my media consumption this day, & most days, is more about entertainment than anything else. Considering all the crazy news circulating right now regarding current affairs & global happenings, I haven’t been seeking out news or lingering on news for long, as it becomes too overwhelming for me. I interact with many people throughout the day & if someone mentions something that they saw on the news that morning, I may go online & seek it out later if I remember to, otherwise at the moment news isn’t something I consume with regularity.

As far as trusted media, the only truly trusted media I consumed this day were from The New York Times & Slate. Every other media source I would rank low on the credibility scale because they are either entertainment based like Disney+, or the content is created by the general public & I have not curated my feeds or timelines to be news based.

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. 

Hi, this is my first post here!

Here it is.. my 24 hour media use!

I start all of my days the same, which includes me using my iPhone as my alarm clock and waking up to whatever song I have picked to be my alarm. The song I currently wake up to is Mulholland Drive by the artist Jake Miller.

Once awake, I typically find myself heading to Twitter to catch up on any news, gossip, or whatever it may be. My timeline is filled with tweets from friends and celebrities, and maybe a few news sites here and there. That is my goal for 2020, to actively follow the news on a local and global level.

I do check my explore page and all of the trending topics picked for me, and the worldwide trends too. I am currently all in on the scandals rocking the MLB at the moment. I recently came across a video that depicts the current chaos of the MLB as a scene from the movie Mean Girls, it earned an automatic like and retweet from me. Right now, the buzz is focused around the Houston Astros and whether or not cheating was involved with their World Series run.

After scrolling through twitter, I then open Instagram, where I follow similar people from twitter. I actively like and comment on Instagram posts, and also post to my story a fair amount, but I do not find myself posting my own pictures. I remember when Instagram first came out, I would try out all of the filter and post pictures of whatever I wanted. Now I have to think to myself “is this really Instagram worthy?” on just about anything I post.

This is where I call it quits on social media so I can take time to get ready. I usually listen to Spotify for an hour or two, scrolling between my liked songs and albums I am currently enjoying. Right now, I have been streaming Harry Styles’ newest album “Fine Line” as well as the album “Malibu Nights” by LANY.

As I go about my day I will randomly check in on my socials. Facebook is my least used app, I do not post anything on Facebook unless it is in a private group I am in with around 100 of my coworkers. However, Facebook is where I tend to read the most of my news. I follow local news stations here in the Quad Cities, such as KWQC and WQAD. I mostly look at the weather and whatever else peaks my interest. Many of my friends share articles from places such as CNN, The Washington Post, and The Wall Street Journal. This week I have read a handful of articles from each of these websites, mostly pertaining to politics.

Coming home from work I turn the television on while starting to make dinner. I turn on CNN while making dinner, having it on in the background and listening to it, but not actively watching. Once done cooking I flip to a different channel, or browse channels trying to find a show or movie to watch.

I end my night flipping through my phone and probably looking for something to watch on Netflix or Hulu. Going between all the social media apps can get tiring, so I always look through the trending topics, hoping to find something that peaks my interest.

Overall, I do not view as much news as I would like, it is not everyday that I read articles about politics, finance, or the newest advancements in tech, although that is what I am working towards in this new year. When it comes to how reliable my news sources are, I do not think they are that bad. On a scale from 1 to 10 I would give my overall score a 7 (although that may be generous). The news journals that I read on occasion I would rank at a 7 or 8, while I find them to be reliable, I do find the bias among them at times, which is turns me away from the topic and I lose interest. The news I view on twitter I would rank between a 5 and 6, it all depends on what the topic is and who is tweeting it. If it is a sports related topic from one of the top analysts at ESPN, I would find that quite convincing. So in short, I know I have work to do when it comes to finding more reliable news sources, and I know that with the knowledge I gain from this class I will get there.

This is a timeline of my media consumption from Wednesday, Jan. 15. I was watching my media all week, but decided because I was most active on Wednesday since I didn’t have work or class that I would track that one.

8:00 a.m.: Woke up and scrolled through Instagram, Twitter and Facebook to catch up on both social and news content I missed from the night previous and the early east coast hours.

9:30 a.m.: Turn on C-Span on my laptop and listen to the vote on impeachment documents transferred to the Senate while doing other work.

Also check The New York Times, The Washington Post and Politico to read about the impeachment process in D.C. (I am a bit of a politics junkie).

10:00 a.m.: I watched a highlight on Youtube of the College Football Playoffs, which I was unable to watch earlier this week.

10:30 a.m.: I checked The Arizona Republic website, azcentral.com for local news. I recently finished an internship there and have continued to read the paper. I also checked The Arizona Capitol Times at around the same time because the legislative session in Arizona recently started and I wanted to see if anything was happening.

The storines of the day, were mostly about a bill regarding sex education in Arizona, as well as groundwater legislation.

12:00 p.m.: While I was making lunch, I listened to last week’s Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me, an NPR radio show, on the Spotify app. The show is great because, while it does make fun of the news, it showcases interesting stories from throughout the country that week.

1:00 p.m.: I watched the last episode of the new Netflix documentary Cheer, which follows a junior college cheer time, one of the best in the nation, around for an entire season and shows their struggles and successes.

3:00 p.m.: Spent time reading my textbook on campaigns and elections, not sure it’s necessarily media but I would probably loop textbooks in.

4:11 p.m.: Photo on twitter showing impeachment articles moving from house to senate.

4:17 p.m.: I read this story on azcentral about a popular bar in Tempe (where I live) had a location in Chicago that settled sexual assault lawsuits. I also sent the article over slack to my editors at The State Press to see if the news was worthy of a story by us.

4:22 p.m: Read another story on azcentral about Gov. Doug Ducey shutting down Lewis Prison in Buckeye. This story interested me particularly because as an intern last semester I wrote a couple of stories about Lewis.

4:30 p.m.: Got a bit distracted from work and watched this video of Bobby Flay making pancakes on Youtube.

4:35 p.m.: Back to writing this blog post, while I listen to the FiveThirtyEight Politics podcast on the previous presidential debate in the background. They described the debate as not particularly exciting minus a few brief moments.

5:00 p.m.: Scroll through social media, including Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Snapchat. Watched this Youtube Video, which I found on Facebook, of presidential candidate Andrew Yang entering the New Yorker cartoon competition.

6:00 p.m.: While eating dinner, my roommate and I streamed Brooklyn 99 on Hulu and watched two episodes.

7:00 p.m.: I read The Yellowsheet Report, an Arizona political tipsheet run by the cap times. This writing style of the newsletter is what keeps me reading, it’s often sarcastic or even at times crude, but the news is always there and they make it interesting.

8:00 p.m.: From about 8 until I ended up going to bed, my media consumption was mostly social media, which I typically look through if I have a few minutes free or some time to kill.

According to an app on my iPhone that tracks my usage, I spent the most time during this period on Instagram, with Snapchat in second.

Analysis:

At times, I feel like my life revolves around media and consuming it, especially as a journalism major. What I think I found most interesting from this was how many news stories or things I find not by going directly to the sites, but on social media.

This assignment also made me conscious of how much time I spend consuming media, especially on days where I have more free time. I wonder if there’s a way to use my media time more productively without the distractions that inherently are a part of social media.

I look forward to analyzing my media usage throughout the semester, and I really enjoyed this assignment.

2/15 EDIT:

Honestly, I don’t think my habits have changed all that much since the class started. I have definitely read more on the topic I chose for this blog, and that opened me up to more research-based sites like Gallup and Pew, but other than that I haven’t seen a huge shift.

I will say I do read more now than I did before, and I’m also much more aware of what others are reading a sharing online. Overall though, while I have enjoyed and learned a lot in this class, my overall habits have not seen a huge shift.

Hello class, this is my first blog post!

-Gabriela Grant

As a media consumer int the morning:

I woke up and got dressed to go to the office without opening any forms of social media. When I get to work, I immediately open my email on my cell phone to sort through all emails. I also open up Instagram and scroll for about 10 minutes. What I saw was news about a new movie called Bad Boys 3 starring Martin Lawrence and Will Smith. I also look at the CNN posts on Instagram to see what our president is currently doing with our nation.  The next thing that I pull up (and I usually do not on a daily basis) is to open up in Facebook to see any updates on news and family and friends.

Mid-afternoon:

In the afternoon, close to about 11:30 am, I open up Instagram on my cell phone to check any updates on Beyoncés new clothing line that has everyone so excited for new clothing. I also see more posts about the wildfires in Australia as well as Brazil from CNN’s Instagram page.

During Lunch:

I open my emails on my phone to see if I received any news alert or important emails from anyone. Once I do that, I open up Instagram again to see what has been updated. Once I scroll through and see more CNN posts about the terrorist threats from Iran, I see more news about celebrities such as Kylie Jenners‘ new lip kit out for sale.

After lunch:

I return to my desk and take some time to search the Yahoo! webpage on my work computer to see what kind of news is available. I see more information about the President and how he is tweeting more of his opinions on Twitter. I also take a look at some news posts on Yahoo! to see what is being done about the impeachment process of President Trump.

Late Afternoon:

I open up my phone and activate the Instagram application to view any news updates on any celebrity or world news. I pay attention to the quick posts that CNN provides about the news that happens around the world. I will view more information about the president as well as some news about how the royal family has broken up.

Ranking: The sources that I use to retrieve news can be very hit or miss. Instagram can be a source that I rank a 3 for credibility just because the people can post anything and call it “news”. The Yahoo website has a ranking of 8 because I truly believe that most of the information provided is more accurate because that is their main focus. I also am a little skeptical because I cannot completely figure out where the information is coming from and if it is 100% true.  CNN’s page on Instagram I can rate an 8 because their main profession is getting accurate news.

Hi everyone! This is my first blog post.

GMA, stocks, and news websites

As I start my day off with a cup of coffee and my two rescue cats by my side, I turn on Good Morning America. I like the way that GMA flows with its fun and upbeat style of reporting the news. Michael Strahan’s smile alone starts my day off on a positive note, not to mention that his charisma and funny attitude always put me in a good mood. Robin Roberts has a way of providing news in a very emotional yet positive manner that draws me into whatever story that she is reporting. My favorite day of the week for GMA is Thursday. On Thursdays, Tory Johnson has her amazing Deals and Steals show, providing huge discounts on useful everyday products. As embarrassing as it sounds, I am a person who thoroughly appreciates a good deal. Because of this, Thursdays have become the highlight of my week.

“Coffee” by Fergus. is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

While watching GMA, I will scroll through all of my work emails, texts, and voicemails on my iPhone. I need to make sure that nothing huge has happened overnight in the gaming arena that may need to be addressed immediately. Once I have made sure that all is well in the casino world and that none of my messages require an urgent reply, I will then flip through several different websites. I will look at Nasdaq and The Wall Street Journal to view the current gaming stock numbers focusing on Caesars Entertainment and Eldorado Resorts. Eldorado Resorts is acquiring Caesars Entertainment right now, so the vast amount of news reported on my company recently keeps me busy with daily reading. I will also read the Las Vegas Review-Journal to catch up on local news. Once I have caught up on world news, local news, gaming news, checked my messages, and stocks, I then proceed to get ready for my workday.

Audiobook inspiration and podcasts

As I prepare for the day and I run my bath, I turn on my most recent audiobook purchased from Amazon Audible called Shoe Dog. Shoe Dog is a memoir by the creator of Nike, Phil Knight. I enjoy listening to books about successful people and learning the back story of how they have become who they are today. Listening to books such as these serve as a form of daily inspiration for me. When I start my day off with inspiration, positive energy continues throughout my workday. For the last two years, I have been listening to one audiobook almost every other week through audible. I will play the book in the morning for an hour while I am taking my bath and getting ready for work. If you make reading a part of your daily routine, you will be surprised by how much you can learn and absorb while expanding your vocabulary at the same time. 

“Audible: Stories that Surround You” by Alvin Groen is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0

When I drive to work, I will listen to the current audible book on my drive, or I may turn on a podcast. For example, if I want to zone out, I will put on The Joe Rogan Experience. Some of the topics and people that Joe has on his show are utterly shocking but also intriguing. Once I am at work, I will spend the majority of my day on the phone and in meetings. A large amount of my day is spent responding to extensive emails and phone calls regarding marketing. 

Casino gaming alerts and YouTube

I am currently marketing for a 24 person, million-dollar winner-take-all blackjack tournament that we are having at Caesars Palace in March. I am spending the majority of my day making phone calls and sending emails and texts for this private VIP tournament. During the day, I will receive news alerts while I am marketing. I have my phone set to alert me with vital news information pertaining to my business. For example, I may be informed about the sale of an Atlantic City casino property or perhaps a change in management at another property. I will check these alerts and also check the world news throughout the day. On my drive home, if I am inspired by what I had listened to in the morning, I will continue where I left off. If I have had a long day and I am exhausted, I will listen to music.

“Speed up youtube” by Akshay Hallur is licensed under CC BY-ND 2.0

The conclusion of my day usually includes one of my guilty pleasures, which is ending my day by watching one of my favorite YouTube channels. I enjoy the beauty guru channels on YouTube as they are so far removed from my everyday corporate life. I have even learned special makeup techniques that I now use daily thanks to watching the makeup tutorials. I also like to watch other channels such as 60 Minutes Australia and Gone with the Wynns, which is a channel that follows the exciting travels of a couple and their cats as they sail around the world. Before I go to bed, I will go through my work emails one last time and check the news alerts. As long as nothing urgent has occurred in the casino gaming world, I am off to sleep to get ready to do it all again tomorrow.

I have listed the media sources that I utilize below along with a ranking from 1 (least trusted) – 10 (most trusted):

Las Vegas Review-Journal (8) The RJ is known for factual reporting due to the proper sourcing of information. In some stories, I do question Sheldon Adelson’s influence on the paper.  

Good Morning America (8) I believe GMA is mostly accurate with their reporting.  I feel that more research is needed in some cases on specific stories.

Wall Street Journal (8) The Wall Street Journal is primarily accurate with their reporting, and they have low biased news reporting.

Nasdaq (9)  Highly reliable computer systems are used to handle the exchange of stocks between buyers and sellers in a real-time format.

The Joe Rogan Experience (6)  Joe does not pretend to be an expert on anything, and he is speaking more about his personal life experiences and not necessarily proven facts that require fact-checking.