In today’s day and age, the use of media is an everyday part of college students’ lives. Whether the use of media is to utilize the internet to access an online textbook or see what your friends are up to on social media, media use is, if not appears to be, an essential part of everyday life and functionality. Recording my use of media for a span of forty-eight hours, I am able to track my media use and come to conclusions about this subject. First of all, the form of media I used the most was the internet in the form of completing classwork and my internship. Utilizing the internet to access an online textbook, use Roger Williams University cite “Bridges,” referring to APA citation websites, using the Roger Williams University Directory for my internship, and researching local charter buses also for my internship, I utilized the internet for academic or work purposes for a total of seven hours and forty-five minutes.
The form of media that I used the least (but still used) was e-mail. Mainly only opening email and quickly reading or instantly deleting them, in the case of SPAM, I did not spend much time using email at all. Using email only approximately twenty-five minutes within the forty-eight hour documented timespan, the majority of the reason that number is even twenty-five is because I need to draft and send a few brief emails.
The amount of time spent communicating with another person over media was about about two hours and five minutes. I spent twenty minutes of e-mail, forty-five minutes on the telephone, and about one cumulative hour or text messaging (Apple messaging, WhatsApp, and Facebook Messenger).
Regarding monologic media usage, I spent approximately two hours and fifty-five minutes on this form of media. This time was spent utilizing television for one hour and twenty-five minutes and listening to the radio on my commute to campus for a total of one hour and fifteen-minutes.
The thing that surprised me the most about my time spent engaged in the use of media was the amount of time I did not utilize social media. Within the forty-eight hour timespan, I only used social media (Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat) for fifty-five minutes. I think the reason why this number surprised me is because today, young people, including college students, are constantly portrayed as people who “cannot get off of their phones” and “always on social media 24/7” however I only engaged in social media for less than an hour in two days. On the flip-side, however, I was also shocked with how much time I spent engaged in work and classwork related media. I was not surprised by this because of the assumption that I would not engage in classwork outside of class however because of the large difference in time spent academic and professional internet use in comparison to everything else. While I spent over seven hours on the internet in order to complete tasks for class and work, the media platform that I engaged in the most following this was television, again only spending an hour and twenty-minutes engaged in this media.
Based on this exercise, I do not believe I will change anything regarding my media usage. To be honest, I was pleasantly surprised with the results I found during this media-tracking process. Noticing that I engaged in media primarily to benefit my studies and complete tasks at work through the internet, being a college student, I will attempt to keep my engagement with media this way.
The theorist that I believe best fits this assignment is Thomas Frank. Frank, as described by Sturken and Cartwright (2009) in “Practices of Looking,” argued the existence of counterculture in advertising in order to “make certain brands seem hip and cool” (p. 294). The idea of counterculture is what stuck out to me most. Describing counterculture as a “cutting-edge cool [that makes something popular] one month becomes uncool the next when a particular look or item goes mainstream” (p. 294). The way I connected Frank’s counterculture to my media-tracking was by analyzing the social media platforms I used when I was engaging in social media: mainly dominated by Instagram and Snapchat. If I were assigned to a media-tracking assignment two or three years ago, however, the social media platform I would most certainly be using the most would be Facebook, for example. Because of the mainstream popularity of Facebook among older generations, I, along with what I assume to be the majority of young people, have engaged in active counterculture as I have moved away from Facebook and rather to other social media platforms such as Instagram and Snapchat.
Cartwright, L., & Sturken, M. (2009). Practices of looking: an introduction to visual culture. New York, NY: Oxford University Press Inc.
Colin Mallory 