A 24 Hour Media Diary

7:30 Woke to music (don’t know what the songs were), thanks to the teenager across the road who likes to share with the whole street. (30 minutes)

9:30 My husband was playing tunes on his iPhone, I was serenaded with The Presidents – Kitty and Peaches, then Will Smith Getting Jiggy With It,Wild Wild West and Millenium. (15 minutes)

10:15 TV on in the corner of screen while using the guide to set shows to record, saw bits of ‘The Circle’ and ‘The Morning Show’. (5 minutes)

10:20 Put on ABC news 24 for some background noise, it’s the best thing to get my little girl to fall asleep to for some strange reason. (10 minutes)

10:20 Went onto the Internet and was switching between various email accounts, Facebook, and online news sites. (40 minutes)

10:30 My husband turned off the background news and started playing his recorded Formula 1 so that became the background TV. (30 minutes)

11:00 Driving. I saw various billboards, advertising signs, shop advertising etc. (30 minutes).

1:00 Driving back home. Saw more various billboards, advertising images etc. (30 minutes)

1:45 Formula 1 was put back on , it was background noise to what I was doing. (55 minutes)

2:00 Playing computer game ‘JoJos Fashion World Tour 3’. (40 minutes)

2:40 Driving. Notices various billboards and advertising signs etc. (20 minutes)

3:00 Sitting in a waiting room, TV on in the corner could see half the screen but no sound, read covers of visible magazines but did not pick any up. (25 minutes)

3:50 Driving. More billboards, advertising signs etc., also listened to part of ‘Wild Trance Anthems Disk 1’. (20 minutes)

4:10 ABC News 24 was on TV when I got home, it remained on in the background. (30 minutes)

4:40 My husband put on the PS3 and played ‘GT5’, I was noticing game on and off in background. (2 hours, 50 minutes)

5:55 Back on PC playing ‘JoJos Fashion World Tour 3’ again. (1 hour)

7:30 Half watched just under 2 episodes of Big Bang Theory on TV while doing other things. (50 minutes)

8:20 On the Internet again, again a mix of email, Facebook and news sites. (1 hour, 55 minutes)

10:15 Curtin blackboard, read introduction posts for both subjects then looked at a PDF. (45 minutes)

11:00 Worked on drafting a blog post for my Pregnancy Fitness Blog. (20 minutes)

11:20 Went to bed where I read ‘Raymond E Fiest’, ‘Magician’ before going to sleep. (1 hour 15 minutes)

In summary I spent about:

- 45 minutes listening to other peoples music.

- 20 minutes listening to my own music.

- 50 minutes of half watching TV while doing other activities.

- 3 hours with a TV on in the background (25 in a waiting room, the rest at home).

- 25 minutes of looking at magazine covers repeatedly.

- 1 hour 40 of seeing various advertising and promotion material while driving.

- 2 hours 50 minutes of PS3 being on in the background.

- 1 hour, 40 minutes playing computer games.

- 2 hours, 35 minutes of various internet (email, facebook and news).

- 45 minutes of study.

- 1 hour, 15 minutes reading.

- 20 minutes creating a blog post.

Even though there where times with no media being consumed, due to often having two media going at once for parts of the day, the total is 985 minutes or 16 hours and 25 minutes of media consumed across the day!!!

I'm Back

It's been a long time since I have wrote on this blog. Not surprising given it was for uni work and the course finished without leaving me motivation to keep blogging. Now I am studying WEB207 and will be posting again... at least for a while.

Politics and the Internet

The task we have been set is to review two political sites in terms of the kinds of involvement they encourage. The sites i selected from the given list were Kevin MP and Malcolm Turnbull.

Lets start by looking at the front page..... Turnbulls' site starts by directing you to sign up for his e-newsletter, which I skipped and went on to the rest of the site. Kevin on the other hand is less formal, by using his first name only, and yes also has the email sign up.... but also also has a box on the bottom left asking for visitors to get in touch. There is also links to facebook, MySpace, Twitter, Youtube and flickr. This is in addition to an embedded YouTube video that has a go at Turnbull links to other videos and to 'hot topics'.

Now on to page two for Turnbull and yes there are the links to facebook, YouTube, Twitter, MySpace and flickr as well. Their is a link 'contact Malcolm' on the top right and the rest of the page that takes you to a page that give postal, telephone and fax contact details as well as a web form for leaving comments. The site also give links for a range of information that is all styled in the more traditional broadcast format, just through new media like podcasts and big slabs of text interlaced with pictures.

Overall both politicians are encouraging the same types of interaction within their main website. I would say though that Kevin encourages more interaction than Malcolm, just by the fact that his site opens up with the possibility for interaction where as Malcolms' site requires visitors to click through a few layers before they can interact.

Medical Sites Review

I an reviewing two medical sites here. The first is a peer support site for cancer survivors family and friends called ONCOChat. The second is called WebMD and gives information on a range of diseases and ailments.

ONCO chat clearly states in its opening paragraph that "We don't offer medical advice or professional counseling", rather it is for giving and receiving of support between cancer survivors and their families. When I looked more closely at the chat function I had to agree to terms and conditions before use, one of which was that anyone lurking for more than 20 minutes would be kicked out! Obviously they don't want a site full of lurkers, though I decided to go lurk for a bit and check out how the site is actually being used. After waiting a painfully long time for it to connect, that included a few time outs, I concluded connecting wouldn't happen through there web based method, and I'm not going to the trouble of downloading there software for the other connection method, just so I can lurk in there for a few minutes!

The WebMD site on the other hand gives the initial appearance of providing medical advice and information. However after scrolling down their web site, on the bottom line in small print, well below the last of the interesting stuff that most people would look at I found this statement "WebMD does not provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment.". This was the only disclaimer I found on the site and despite the disclaimer they have a search function to search by symptom! Very interesting for a site that claims not to assist with diagnosis! When trying to verify the quality of the site I came across a page that had details of the sites experts, each with a ling string of letters after their name and a specific are of expertise, but very little additional information. A quick overview on some of the topics I feel I know more about, had me coming to the conclusion that the site only provides basic information on topics, though covers an extensive range of topics.

I think that sites like these have affected the health and medical industry by shifting power to the patients. They allow people to find out some information about their conditions online, wither through online 'experts' or through talking to peers with similar issues. They allow for people to look up 'facts' after the visit to their doctor and verify the information given to them They allow people to better equip themselves to question their doctor on both diagnosis and treatments given, and finally they allow people to know there are others out their in the same boat, that they are not alone.

Medicine 2.0

I have just read an article by Gunther Eysenbach on Medicine 2.0. It considers the potential interactions between the medical industry and Web 2.0 technologies. The desire and potential demand of individuals towards having control of their medical information and the interactions between patients, doctors and researchers within such an environment are the key focus and considerations of the article.

Where consumers to have full access and control over their medical records, the relationship between doctor and patient as we see it today would be altered. If patients were to have control over their medical records there would be a power shift from patients being reliant on their GP for all their medical information as it would make it easier for the patient to shift GP's, get second opinions etc.

The potential for social networking being combined with medical information would also have passable far reaching effects. It would become more easy for support groups to be established where people are suffering serious and ongoing ailments. It would also make it easier for individuals to gain insights and advise from others with similar conditions, for better or worse!

Overall this article provided a lot of food for thought on where Medicine 2.0 could be headed. Some of the possibilities are scary to think about, though most are liberating and help shift more power to the patients.

Mundane Realities of Using The Net For Health Information

The Task
The first reading for our current module, Health: What my doctor didn't tell me, is titled The mundane realities of the everyday lay use of the Internet for heath, and their consequences for media convergence by S Nettleton, R Burrows and L O'Malley.

The Summary
This summarises the main attitudes of people towards online health information as presented in the article. Attitudes towards online health can be totally against it, think it is a great and empowering thing or see is as complementary to services provided by medical practitioners. The article focused on people in the last category, seeing the others as too extreme.

Some of the rhetorical devices that were mentioned that are used to determine if a site is trustworthy or not are:

• Trust for sites within own national boundaries, but not for ones from other countries
• Trust for sites from recognised real world organisations (eg World Health Organisation), but not from organisations they haven't herd of.
• Higher trust for non-commercial sites with commercial sites being seen as only trying to sell their own product. Sometimes well established, known and long running companies are an exception to this.
• More trusted when the information on the site is either directly from a medical professional or endorsed by a medical professional, though still viewed with caution if the later.
• Experience of others is not trusted.
• If the information is repeated on most sites visited and seems to be the majority view it will usually be trusted.

It was also noted that people see 'others' as likely to be duped into trusting poor medical advice while seeing them selves as cautious enough to not be fooled into listening to inaccurate advice.

People also tend to use online health information as part of there overall medical experience. This might be in the form of researching if they should see a doctor, finding out more so they can ask the doctor better questions and better understand the information from the doctor, or to just further the information they have been given to help discuss this with others.

The Modern Relevance
The research in the article was conducted in 2002, seven years ago. Despite this I still think that much of it is relevant today. Even though the proliferation of the Internet has increased I still think when it comes to health information people are wary and want to ensure they only follow quality advise. As such I think that people will still be wary of information sourced from the Internet and many of the above criteria that individuals indicated would still apply.

I think the limitations of the above study in terms of relevance is not so much when the study was done but how the study was done. The study was a qualitative study of 6 Britain citizens from a range of economic classes. If they had spoken to people from countries other than Britain would they have had the same level of nationalism in the sites they would trust? If they had spoken to people from a larger range of ages and socio-economic classes would the results be the same? These are the sorts of questions that need to be asked and answered before the results can be generalised more widely.

Assignment 1, over and out.

Another one bites the dust! Assignment 1 is finally finished and submitted. For this we had to look at 'everyday Internet use' and how it is part of our lives. This was for yourself, those in the course and how our use compares to others in the course.

I was a little sceptical about this assignment at the start. Though I really enjoyed reading every ones posts and soon got into the assignment :)

Due to Black board being down this coming week we were given a group extension until midnight Friday. I decided not to take this extension though as I am moving house on Friday and won't be able to post it on time if I leave it until Black Board is back up!

Anyway this was a good chance to really reflect more deeply on how I use the net, before work, during the work day and of an evening and compare this to others. Sadly this assignment has just furthered my view that I already spend too much time on the Internet! At least I enjoy it though :)

I want my, I want my, I want my MP3!

Music is part of everyday life in that it provides the background noise other functions are performed to, it sets the mood in other media such as film and television and it provides direct intensive listening episodes where the music is the focus. The Internet impacts on this by creating new ways for fans of alternate music to access there preferred music and also providing more media channels that music is an integral part of.
In response to the reading of Laughey, D. (2007). Music Media in Young People's Everyday Lives. In Music, Sound and Multimedia: From the Live to the Virtual (pp. 172-187). , accessed June 8, 2009.

From reading Beer, a discussion on how Top of the Pops ended, it is clear that increased access to personalised forms of music consummation is seen to have a major role in the demise of this show. The BBS blames the failure of the show on digital media, but does the Internet in itself necessarily work against broadcast media? It is fairly clear that the Internet does have an impact on broadcast media, as discussed in a presentation by Mark Pesce. While this presentation is pertaining to television viewing, many of these same issues would also effect the music industry and music broadcasters.

The effect of MySpace, and in particular the way they display music, also impacts on the music industry. There is a heavy focus on music, presenting new bands and encouraging people to engage with the music through both listening as well as messaging and comments. From my own observations of watching my students access music, many of them go straight to MySpace when they want to listen to music. Those that don't use MySpace to access music will go to similar sites. Due to this I see the effect of such sites increasing in the future and impacting on the more traditional music industry even more heavily.