Ethan Zuckerman on Monitoring Our Media Diet

In this segment from NPR's On The Media, Ethan Zuckerman of Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet and Society advocates a passive media consumption documentation system using software called RescueTime. Though the software is designed as a productivity tool, it can also collect and be used to analyze your web browsing habits. Will consider using this myself and posting results. Zuckerman also reports keeping a personal media diary to keep track of his own media use.

Was nice to hear this piece about a media diary/tracking media consumption from a well-entrenched media critic.

So what are some advantages and disadvantages of a passive vs. active approach to documenting media usage? An active approach would be exemplified in keeping a daily diary of media usage. A passive approach would be represented by using software to track media usage. Alternatively, these two cases might be analyzed as qualitative and quantitative approaches. What's lost and what's gained with each one?

Active/Diary Approach

Pros:
-awareness; heightens awareness of media use while using media
-detail; you can add detail about your experience of browsing the web or listening to the radio. or not.
-tells your own story; you can describe your media usage in your own terms, thereby conveying your ideology about a given medium or technology
-includes analog; you can include a variety of media interactions, beyond just electronic communications media, such as print, verbal/oral, musical, fashion, etc.

Cons:
-time consuming; takes anything from a few extra seconds to a few extra hours to produce a daily reflection on one's media use. the longer the reflection, the higher the quality? but cuts in on "productivity."
-alters behavior; this was Zuckerman's point. keeping a diary of your media usage will cause you to be aware of, and thus alter, your media usage. i notice the same thing if/when attempting to practice breathing awareness - i try to breath naturally, but in so doing end up with deeper or more belabored breaths
-subjective; people lie. there might be some truths about your media consumption you'd rather not acknoledge, privately or publicly.
-requires motivation; along the lines of time consuming, i've been advocating keeping track of my media usage for a while. but i rarely follow through. because at the end of the day, it takes time and energy to produce a diary and i'd rather just flake out and watch some tv or read a book or browse the web, etc.

Passive/Software Approach

Pros:
-passive tracking; keeps track of your media usage for you, and you don't have to do a thing. thereby addressing most of the cons in the diary approach.
-you're less likely to alter your behavior; though in the case of RescueTime this may not be true, since it's also used as a productivity tool that's designed to get you to change your behavior
-quantitative analysis; you can crunch numbers at the end of the month, week, quarter, etc.
-objective approach; it'll record everything you do on the web, for better or for worse.
-a computer does all the work for you

Cons:
-limited to digital media; what about that bumber sticker you saw or the street musician playing bucket drums?
-no chance for reflection at the end of the day; unless you check your stats. but not necessarily qualitative reflection or critical thinking.
-no personal voice; everyone's computer keeps a cache of the websites you visit, or your browser can keep a history. but is that meaningful in and of itself? how is a narration of our web history different from the file located on our hard drive?

FreeRice.com

FreeRice is an online vocabulary game/study tool that donates 10 grains of rice to the UN World Food Fund every time you get a question right. Play and see!

I'm coming late in the game to this one, but it's great for studying for the GRE.

Exactly the kind of amalgamation of education, technology, interactive media, social justice, and advertising that uses the web to its utmost. Can crowdsourcing end world hunger?

As we spend more and more of our time on the web, games like this combine our incentive to play, challenge ourselves, and contribute to a good cause.

Here is a good question in technology and ethics: the use of "ricebots," i.e. computer programs/scripts, that play the game instead of human, can result in faster donation of rice than human play. However, if advertisers are aware of the bot activity, they have less incentive to pay for the rice. In the long run, these bots could damage the reputation and effectiveness of FreeRice, resulting in the addition of a warning to the FAQ section of the site against "ricebots." But if a "ricebot" can feed more people more quickly, is it ultimately more humane, even if it hurts the game in the long run? Moreover, if a ricebot can feed more people AND go undetected, should more undetectable ricebots be deployed?

In any case, brilliant idea by John Breen, partnered with the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University.

Collective Ignorance in "My Year of Meats"

An excerpt from a 1998 novel I've been reading, My Year of Meats, by Ruth L. Ozeki:

"I would like to think of my 'ignorance' less as a personal failing and more as a massive cultural trend, and example of doubling, of psychic numbing, that characterizes the end of the millenium. If we can't act on knowledge, then we can't survive without ignorance. So we cultivate ignorance, go to great lengths to celebrate it, even. The faux-dumb aesthetic that dominates TV and Hollywood must be about this. Fed on a media diet of really bad news...which we, as citizens have so little control..., we live in a perpetual state of repressed panic. We are paralyzed by bad knowledge, from which the only escape is playing dumb. Ignorance becomes empowering because it enables people to live. Stupidity becomes proactive, a political statement. Our collective norm.

Maybe this exempts me as an individual, but it sure makes me entirely culpable as a global media maker."

It's remarkable to me that this passage was written before the entire Bush Presidency, which could easily be argued to have embraced the faux-dumb aesthetic. Indeed, I myself fully admit to embracing it through my chosen media diet. Prime example: season 6 of my favorite TV show, It's Always Sunny in Philedelphia, premieres tomorrow night, and I can't wait!

Ozeki's astute observations remain relevant in todays media climate, except that we as citizens have gained some control. In fact, the average American with a laptop is a global media maker. (Or at least has the potential to be, given that we protect certain tenants of democratic digital society, such as net neutrality.) It's my hope that I'm developing a healthy media-food diet, one which both celebrates human folly (as per the faux-dumb aesthetic), but also sharpens my capacity as a critical media consumer and producer. Though my media choices are plagued with imperfections, this blog provides me with a refuge for collecting disparate thoughts into something that might be considered meaningful - not contributing to digital noise and information clutter - but contributing to knowledge and, ultimately, understanding in daily life.