Category: Week One

Saturday was kind of a weird day for me to record all my media use because my husband was on night shift and so it kind of throws everything off. Also, this really shows what a cool person I am! In bed by 9:30 on a Saturday night!

6:00 AM – Husband comes home from night shift which wakes me up
I’m still too sleepy to do much of anything (IT’S A SATURDAY!!!!) but I scroll Facebook and check any emails. Nothing from work, only a few promo emails that I quickly discarded and some shipping notifications.
6:30 – 8:30 I turned on Suits on Amazon Prime and kind of hazily watched it from 6:30-8:30.
At this point I decided to get out of bed and actually do something! I even made coffee!
8:45 AM I got a SnapChat from my sister in law (my adorable niece!!) which prompted me to check Snapchat stories and do another run through of Facebook.
Sometimes I have to laugh, and sometimes I just get sad, about everyone I know sharing the newest version of “Facebook is going to start stealing your pictures and your soul TOMORROW if you don’t share this” posts. I saw that there was a purse sale at a shop that I like, so I browsed through the selection and decided I have enough purses. I resisted the urge to start arguments with my family members sharing inflammatory posts from unreliable sources.
I exchanged text messages with some of my friends from work who are also taking college classes at various other institutions and we exchanged a few memes relating to work/school.
I also exchanged messages with my mom and my sister, and some other family members. My husband’s cousin sent a message that her due date is exactly one month away!
9:00 AM – 11:00 AM – I checked Canvas, replied to some discussions in this course and in my other course. Then I completed the assigned reading from Bit by Bit for my other course, and the associated quiz. Then, I took note of all reading and assignments due for the upcoming week, as well as any work/personal obligations so I had an idea of how to plan my week.
11:00AM – 11:30AM – My coworker texted me that the new season of Good Eats was on Hulu! But alas, it was Good Eats: Reloaded, which aired last season. Even so, I watched the first episode. Alton Brown is one of my most trusted food sources!
11:30AM-12:15PM I turned on the Undisclosed Podcast while I cooked lunch. Undisclosed focuses on cases where they feel the defendant was wrongly convicted. The three hosts are lawyers, and they do incredibly deep dives into all the evidence. I feel that they are a trusted source. Even though they freely admit that they are personally biased towards the defendant’s innocence, they show all sides of the story. I’m currently listening to Season 2 which focuses on Joey Watkins. Each episode is followed by an addendum, hosted by Jon Cryer, which I always get a kick out of. The addendums tend to be more discussion and opinion and less fact-based.
12:15-12:45 – My husband wakes up and we eat lunch.
12:45 – 1:15 – We loaded up all our trash and head to the trash dropoff. We live in a rural area and the cost to have someone pick up our trash every week is astronomical, so we take it ourselves every other week or so. We listened to Y2Kountry on the Sirius XM on the way.
1:15 – 1:45 – We went straight from the dropoff to our gym. I listen to more of Undisclosed while we worked out. While I was at the gym, my coworker texted me and we talked briefly about the Canvas orientation he had hosted that day.
2:00 – 2:30 – We picked up a few items at Wal-Mart, which is right next to the gym. They had background music playing but I can’t remember any of it. Which I guess is the point of background music.
2:30 – 4:30 – My husband turned on SportsCenter and kind of vegged out before he had to go to work.
4:30 – When he left, I turned on CaseFile podcast. This is another True Crime podcast, based out of Australia, although they cover cases from all over the world.
I needed to replace the SSD on my laptop, so I set to work doing that. First I had to create the recovery drive to reinstall Windows. Then I backed up all my data. I physically replaced the drive (I upgraded from 150GB to 1TB) then booted from the recovery drive that I created.
5:30 While Windows was reinstalling, I put on more CaseFile and cooked myself an easy dinner. After I ate, I washed dishes and cleaned the kitchen, all with CaseFile playing.
6:30 Windows was finished installing but now I needed to install the Office Suite, Adobe Suite, and various other programs and just do some general setup. I also had to install several Windows and HP updates. Additionally, I uninstalled a lot of programs that Microsoft adds to its factory image – which I find to be a very annoying media encounter, but an encounter nonetheless. I still had CaseFile playing.
7:30 – When the computer was finally setup, I settled down on the couch to watch some more Suits for a few hours while I worked on some hand embroidery.
9:30 – I headed to bed, where I checked email (surprisingly – I had no urgent work emails, I typically field emails from students and instructors all weekend and almost always end up logging into my work Surface Pro to fix some issue or another, and I would have expected it to be even busier during the first week of classes,) Facebook, and Snapchat again before I turned on Food Network to watch some mindless TV and fell asleep around 10PM.

Over the past few months, I’ve realized just how much of an impact excessive media usage has had on my life. As a result, I’ve been making efforts to be more intentional about the media I’m consuming. Because of this, I was excited to audit 24 hours to see how my media diet looks. I should note that I completed this audit on a Saturday, so my consumption was a bit lighter than it would be on a typical weekday.

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9:30 AM — I was up late last night doing homework and reading for the classes I’m taking this term, which meant I slept in a bit this morning. Because I sleep with my phone plugged in on my nightstand, I have a bad habit of reaching for it first thing in the morning.

Like most days, I scan my email, flag important messages, and delete/unsubscribe from others. Spending a few minutes deleting and unsubscribing has helped me keep my inbox manageable.

Then I spend a few minutes checking Facebook. I am in the middle of preparing for a big move cross-country, which has meant selling off the vast majority of my furniture through the Facebook Marketplace. I have two people picking items up around noon, so I open Facebook Messenger to shoot off a confirmation that we’ll still be meeting.

11:00 AM — After getting ready for the day, I begin taking a peek at some of today’s news headlines. I read a few articles, including “Amazon Has Ceded Control of Its Site. The Result: Thousands of Banned, Unsafe, or Mislabeled Products” from The Wall Street Journal, and “With the global economy slowing and the U.S.-China trade war escalating, Trump arrives at G-7 with a list of grievances” from The Washington Post.

I’m always looking for ways to “hack” how I consume news. I’ve found that using Apple’s News app helps me reference a wider variety of sources and thus, different perspectives. I was using individual apps like CNN and the New York Times for a little while but realized that I was missing out on many other publications and subsequently, different perspectives.

11:30 AM — I sit down, open my computer, and pull up Google Drive, which is where I keep the majority of my school-related documents. I am also using Google Docs to write the initial draft of this blog post. I spend about 45 minutes setting up the document and writing down my media usage so far this morning. After a while, I’m interrupted by a Marketplace buyer stopping by to pick up an area rug.

1:30 PM — I decide to take a short break from packing and sit down with my iPhone. I click on my “social media” folder of apps and open up LinkedIn. Because I’m in the middle of a job hunt, I’ve been trying to be more active on the platform. I scroll through my feed and stop to read a few posts from Fortune and Refinery29.

3:00 PM — My husband and I head out to run an errand, and I wait in the car while he deals with return our cable box and canceling our internet. While waiting, I put on the new Taylor Swift album and listen to a few songs while scrolling through Instagram. I like several photos and then tap through Stories for a few minutes. My husband, while waiting in line inside, tags me in a post about the new Star Wars poster that dropped today. We’re both huge pop culture enthusiasts and often send each other posts like this one.

4:00 PM — Back home, I make myself an afternoon snack and open Facebook. I spend a few minutes scrolling through the Facebook page for Disney’s fan club, D23. There is an expo happening this weekend, which has meant announcements on upcoming movies (like Star Wars) and their new streaming platform, Disney+. I watch a trailer for Lady & The Tramp, the new Mandalorian series coming to Disney+, and read a post about a new ride at Walt Disney World’s Epcot.

As we were sitting on the couch, my husband asked if I was familiar with the “Wilhelm Scream,” which is a stock sound effect used in over 416 films. This led us down the rabbit hole of watching a four-minute compilation on YouTube of the scream in various movies.

10:00 PM — After a long few hours of cleaning and packing, it’s finally time to relax. The television’s been on throughout the evening, mostly playing several episodes of How I Met Your Mother streamed through Hulu. We subscribe to Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon Prime and usually choose a show or movie from one of these platforms to end our nights.

10:30 PM — I lay down in bed with my laptop and scroll through Twitter for a few minutes, though nothing exciting catches my eye enough to engage with or retweet. While another episode of HIMYM comes on, I open Google Drive to finish writing down the rest of today’s media usage for this blog post before calling it a night. I pick up a copy of In the Woods by Tara French to wind down before going to sleep.

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Over the day, I read articles from four news sources. On a scale of 1-10, with 1 being the least trusted and 10 being the most trusted, each of the sources has varying levels of credibility.

The Washington Post — 10/10: I find myself reading news from The Washington Post on almost a daily basis. From my perspective, their stories are thorough and in-depth.

The Wall Street Journal — 10/10: The WSJ is another publication that I regularly refer to when it comes to my daily consumption of news. Similar to The Washington Post, the WSJ’s stories appear highly accurate and thorough. This is a source that friends and family often read and reference, regardless of their specific political leanings, which shows that it’s overall a trusted source.

Fortune — 7/10: Fortune focuses specifically on business news and industry trends. The reason this publication did not score higher is that it often features opinion pieces and does not distinguish between news and editorials.

Refinery29 — 5/10: Refinery29 mostly publishes opinions and lifestyle pieces rather than reporting on general news or industry-specific updates. I mostly read posts that are pop-culture centric or diary-like stories about the lives of women.

Hello to everyone in MCO 425 and welcome to my blog!

How fitting that the first blog assignment for this Digital Media Literacy class is to self-reflect on an average day of our own personal media use.  Or should I say how scary!  I know I was dreading looking at what media I use in a day and especially what news content I interact with.  So let me first start with a timeline of my media use from yesterday, Friday August 23^rd, listed below:

7:00am – Wake up to my child kicking me in bed and get him a banana to eat

while watching Mickey Mouse Clubhouse on tv

– As he watches cartoons, I pick up my phone and check Facebook

and Instagram

– Reality Blurb is my favorite “news” type media to find out

information on reality stars I follow

7:45am – While making breakfast for child, I play Pandora radio

8:00am – While eating at table with child, pulled up the Bert Show out of

Atlanta, GA and listened to the morning show/certain segments

8:45am – Spoke on phone with mom and sister while watching Sesame

Street on the TV with child

10:00am – Went upstairs to do laundry and had 90 Day Fiancé and Sesame

Street playing in background while I cleaned

10:30am – Turned all media off and read books with child

11:15am – Went back downstairs to get lunch ready for toddler (listened to

Pandora radio while cooking and also checked Canvas online

classes for updates on class forum questions)

11:45am – Sat down to eat with toddler and spoke to mom while eating; then

cleaned up once done and cleaned the kitchen while toddler played

with toys

12:45am – Played with toddler and toys

1:15pm – Husband came home and toddler and I went upstairs to catch up

(Sesame Street was on tv)

2:00pm – Toddler fell asleep on chest and I searched the internet

– looked at Instagram again

– looked at Facebook and Army wives information pages

– looked for swimming lessons online

– was shopping online

– looked for flights online

2:30pm – Put toddler to sleep with husband and read Nutrition book for other

session class

4:30pm – Started to make dinner and spoke with husband about day

5:25pm – Dinner complete and sat to eat

6:25pm – All three of us got up and husband and I started to clean kitchen

6:35pm – Made cinnamon rolls and ate a couple with husband/toddler and

then watched a little bit of Croods on tv

7:35pm – Sat at computer to do school work until 9:45pm

– In between lag times, I checked Instagram to take a mental break

10:15pm – Sat in bed and scrolled through Facebook until I fell asleep while on

my phone

Just looking at my daily routine, I believe what it shows has much to do with my current life situation.  I am a mom to a toddler who is all over the place and I am also married to a traveling soldier in the Army.  One may ask, how would those two aspects truly affect my media consumption in a 24 hour period?  Well, on a daily basis I try my hardest to only have shows on the television that would be what I deem as appropriate for the age my child currently is.  This means that I cut out much of what I used to watch on that form of media such as violence, most reality television, and yes, even daily news gets cut in order for my son to watch his Elmo.  One will also notice that while I search the internet, I very rarely if ever post to any social media sites.  I attribute this lack of a social media post presence to the privacy expected being married to a soldier.  None of my social media sites even show where I currently live nor do I make it a point to post about certain life aspects or repost any form of news.  I made the choice a very long time ago that when it came to social media and posting personal feelings about the world around us, I would tame my tongue in order to keep certain opinions private.

While I do stay away from posting or sharing certain things, as one will notice, I do not stay away from reality television or people on my cell phone.  Reality television is my escape, to my husband’s horror, from all things children.  I will watch certain reality shows on my phone while my son is asleep or see what my favorite reality television stars are up to on Instagram.  In terms of news, I am partly embarrassed that in a day most news content I will search for is on Reality Blurb.  It is a news type entertainment website that reports on stories about reality television.  Outside of reality television information, I mostly look at the ID Channel stories, People magazine stories, and food recipes on Instagram.

As we have moved into a world where many hastily share news articles without research to the content that is later found to be “fake news”, I choose to stay out of the fray.  This being the case, Facebook truly serves as a way for me to keep up with old friends and search the current Army base’s wives page for pertinent information to my location.  I did at one point have many friends who would share news articles, mostly political, but I purposely muted them as it got to be where opinions started to serve more as ways to oust others based on whether they agreed or not.

I would not say that I could potentially rank the credibility of reality television or entertainment websites as much of it portrays story lines in order to draw in audiences such as me.  In light of this, I would only rank the news stories I watch from the ID Channel on Instagram as a 10 as they are based on real past crimes that have occurred all over the world.  My media use timeline would show that most days I wake up ignoring, in a sense, the news that happens all around me.  I even purposely listen to the Bert Show radio station only to hear certain segments based around dramatic issues that certain people call in to get advice on.  Maybe my media use is the way it is because I am focusing on my child or maybe it seems simpler at times to only focus on the more redundant news that reality television offers.

In either case, to most I know it will seem as though I am ignorant or uninformed to the world around us.  My true hope is that this class will provide ways to rifle through the pages of misinformation and thereby stimulate my want of the gritty news again.

Thank you all for reading!