Media is one of those really broad terms that can refer to just about everything we do these days. There is old media, new media, social media, digital media, mass media, internet media, and the list goes on.
Mass media is probably what we all deal with the most. You read it, you watch it, you listen to it.
(via wikipedia)
Mass media is a term used to denote a section of the media specifically envisioned and designed to reach a very large audience such as the population of a nation state. It was coined in the 1920s with the advent of nationwide radio networks, mass-circulation newspapers and magazines, although mass media (like books and manuscripts) were present centuries before the term became common. The term public media has a similar meaning: it is the sum of the public mass distributors of news and entertainment across media such as newspapers, television, radio, broadcasting, which may require union membership in some large markets such as Newspaper Guild, AFTRA, & text publishers. The concept of mass media is complicated in some internet media as now individuals have a means of potential exposure on a scale comparable to what was previously restricted to select group of mass media producers. These internet media may include:
The communications audience has been viewed by some commentators as forming a mass society with special characteristics, notably atomization or lack of social connections, which render it especially susceptible to the influence of modern mass-media techniques such as advertising and propaganda. The term “MSM” or “mainstream media” has been widely used in the blogosphere in discussion of the mass media and media bias.
We all consume media in different ways. You may DVR a bunch of shows for the week and sit down for a nice long Sunday afternoon watching them all. You might constantly hit refresh on your favorite blog while sitting at a desk at your boring job.
We all have different media habits, but the ways in which we consume and even create different types of media make us all unique. A little more than a year ago if you asked me what was the first thing I did when I got online in the morning I wouldn’t have said, checked my email, I would have told you that I read my feed reader which, at the time, was full of only apple rumor sites. That was the most important type of media to me.
Many people think that consuming large amounts of media is a waist of time. I have heard many people say that throwing away their TV added hours of productivity to their day. But what do you do when it becomes part of your job to keep up with all this media? How do you keep up with it all?
Many of my close friends find it fascinating that I can go on and on about popular culture at it’s connections to mass media at the time. They wonder how I keep all this information in my head. Well that is easy:
#1 I am a Media Studies major, so while everyone else is taking chemistry, my professor’s would reference last weeks episode of the L word so it would benefit my grade to know what was going on.
#2 I make it my job to read tons of technology, pop culture, and social media blogs every day. Why do I do this? Because that knowledge becomes valuable when I can make connections to why some things work and others failed. For the same reason that we study history (so that it won’t repeat itself) we all should keep a closer eye on the patterns in Media.
I decided to take a look at the tools I use to keep up with all the media that we all see every day. Inspired by a post by Chris Brogan who was inspired by John Jantsch I decided to write out my “social media system” Mine is a little more inclusive however to describe how I keep up with other forms of media as well.
The Workflow:
- Constantly – monitor twitter: I use tweetdeck when at home and Twittelator Pro on my iPhone. I also have certain people’s tweets as well as DM’s pushed straight to SMS. This helps me not to miss anything important. I use twitter favorites a lot to help me remember tweets that had links I wanted to check later or tweets I wanted to follow up on.
- Constantly – check email and respond: I’m one of those people who can’t leave unread message notifications bothering me on my phone. I need to check to see what it is.
- Constantly – monitor Tumblr (if I’m home): Tumblr is another thing that keeps me in the loop. A lot of the time I will see something on tumblr first. I’m a very visual person so I am much more likely to remember something if I see it in my tumblr dashboard than I am to click through a link on twitter.
- Twice daily – Go through Google reader: I try to skim in the morning while sharing and staring items that I want to read later on. In the afternoon or evening I will read it all in depth.
- Daily – Watch new podcasts: I subscribe to over 20 different podcasts, most of them aren’t daily but there are always new unwatched ones I need to catch up on.
- Daily – Write blog posts: While I may not post something new every day I am always working on something. Evernote helps me a lot with this. I can keep writing and bring in photos and different reference links.
- Less daily – Swing by Digg, Facebook, LinkedIn and check for new content and respond to messages.
- Less daily – watch new TV content
- Weekly – Read the Sunday Times Magazine, and the week in review.
In the background:
In order to watch as much video media as I do there are some very important tools I use. iTunes is how I manage all my podcast subscriptions. This way I can always catch up when I am away from my computer on my iPhone.
While I do have a DVR, sometimes it just isn’t enough. It can only record on two channels at once and on Monday nights that just doesn’t cut it. I use a great program for OS X called TVShows. TVShows is an application that automatically downloads torrent files for your favorite shows. Manage your subscriptions and preferences from within the TVShows application, and TVShows takes care of the rest: a background process is automatically launched at a regular interval to check for new episodes. This allows me to keep up with shows I watch regularly and watch them on my computer via Boxee anytime I want.
So that is how I keep up with all the media that I consume. What is your media flow? Write a post on your blog and post a link!
