Thursday, 29 March 2012

Assessment One - Media Use Diary


For this assessment we have been asked to record a diary of our daily media use for ten days. Below is my personal media usage presented in a table and recorded in minutes:




Types of Media

Monday
Tuesday
Wednesday
Thursday
Friday
Saturday
Sunday
Monday
Tuesday
Wednesday
Total
Internet
Uni
30
25
35
0
15
0
40
20
20
15
200
Social Networking
Facebook
45
50
30
50
45
25
55
45
20
25
390

Twitter
0
10
0
0
5
0
0
10
0
0
25
Blogging
Tumblr
25
15
30
0
45
15
35
15
0
10
190

Blogspot
20
0
0
10
0
0
0
15
0
10
55

Youtube
30
0
20
15
20
0
40
10
0
5
140
Reading
Magazines
0
0
0
20
0
0
0
0
0
0
20

Newspapers
15
10
10
0
10
15
15
0
10
15
100

Novels
30
45
20
50
15
60
40
20
20
30
330

Uni
60
20
15
0
20
10
0
60
20
0
205
Mobile Phone

15
10
10
15
5
10
0
5
5
10
85
Television

0
10
0
30
0
20
30
0
0
0
90
Radio

0
0
0
15
10
10
20
0
0
0
55





To present this information in a more comprehensible format, I have constructed a pie chart to represent the different sections of media and my usage of them in percent form:






As it can be seen in the above pie chart, internet is my most utilized form of media at 53%. This is unsurprising as I’m completely aware of my internet addiction. Reading comes in second with 35% and then Television, Mobile Phone and Radio at 5%, 4% and 3% respectively. My mobile phone usage is also not surprising as I don’t often use my phone – in any case I lose it in the folds of my blanket or the dark abyss that is my bag for the majority of the day. This is probably because, unlike 88.3% of my JOUR1111 peers, I do not possess an enabled Smart Phone. However I am not quite so exclusive in the way of my television watching or internet use, most of the cohort watching 1-2 hours or less a day whilst the majority of the cohort spends at least 2-3 hours online.
In order to define my internet usage I have constructed an even further refined pie chart, as seen below: 

It can be seen here that I am more than keeping within the confines of my age group’s stereotype, nearly half of my internet usage being that of Facebook. This is also true for a high percentage of my peers, 96.8% of them having at least one Facebook account and 91.9%  admitting that they spend most of their time on Facebook when online. It can also be seen that over Tumblr and Blogspot, blogging rakes in around 32% of my time on the internet. This is because I also have a blog on Tumblr that was established prior to JOUR1111 and hence maintaining it takes up quite a bit of my internet time and also makes me within the 9.7% of my cohort with two blogs. I also often read others blogs including several Photojournalism blogs; this may imply that my relationship to Journalism and Communication is more online orientated than my peers.

 Unfortunate and predictable, Twitter only makes up a measly 3% of my internet time. This is because, however much I try, I have not really been able to grasp the “Tweeting” concept yet and I fear for the worst as the Journalism world, in its eternal hunger for faster and faster news, turns to twitter and I am left behind in the dust with my newspaper. However I am not alone, as the statistics show that 70.8% of the cohort did also not possess a twitter account before JOUR1111. Moreover, it can be seen that 51.6% of my peers also obtain a percentage of their daily dose of news from a newspaper, though I believe it to be inevitable that this statistc shall decrease in the future as news/journalism becomes more online based. All in all, I believe my relationship with Journalism and Communication is quite internet based but also slightly hybrid between that of the internet and other forms of media, and through the statistics it can be seen that this is also quite congruent with the media usage of my peers. Furthermore, I also believe that the Digital Age and New Media shall slowly but radically change the way we obtain our news but also the way journalists provide it and I look forward to somehow being a part of this much anticipated revolution. 


Wednesday, 28 March 2012

Photographer of the Year

Pictures of the Year International (POYI), is the most prestigious and highly regarded universal Photojournalism contest. Last years winner of the Freelance Photographer of the Year section was Yuri Kozyrev with his body of work called "My Year on Revolution Road" where he travelled to seven countries covering protests and uprisings for TIME, including Egypt, Bahrain, Libya, Yemen, Russia, Greece and Tunisia. Below are just a few of his 42 fabulous images:


Libyans react in horror to the remains of more than 50 victims of a massacre allegedly by Gaddafi forces in Tripoli.
Fish market in Aden.
Protester Nabel Ali Mohamed, 28, receives treatment at a makeshift field hospital. During his detention, security forces tortured Mohamid by putting their cigarettes out on his bare skin.
A defected soldier guards the roof while watching anti-government protesters rally demanding the departure of Yemen's President Ali Abdullah Saleh in Sana'a

"I really wanted to be part of [the revolution] and support it ... I didn't want the people who had died, and the ones who had protested every day, to pay the price alone for what all Egyptians would benefit from." —Fatma Gaber, 16, student