Passive media consumption and lifestyle choices in daily life

Media

In a one day diary of media consumption, it becomes evident that many of my interactions with the world are via media. I receive most of my information through media forms as well. Even when relaxing, media is something that drives the process. There is also a lot of passive consumption of media in my daily life. My media consumption will be analyzed through the lens of different media theories.

Turow

Turow argues that media and advertisers have become exceptionally adept since the 1970s at understanding audiences, their consumption patterns, and how to exploit these. For our part as audience, we have much less understanding of our own consumption patterns. This exercise was the first time that I had really given thought to my daily media exposure, only to realize that my use of media is constant, throughout the day, and sometimes very passive. I used media forms as intermediary between myself and my friends, but also between myself and the world.

The journal was particularly insightful with respect to the passive media consumption. For example when I listened to the public radio, I had no idea what I was going to be exposed to, so I learned a few bits of information that I had not intended to learn. The same occurred when I went to watch the game. There were multiple screens, so I was exposed to programming that was in the background, like the Baseball shows by Ken Burns. I had not sought out that programming, but was exposed to it through my environment.

Turow notes that media starts to dictate lifestyle. One's choice in media reflects and determines lifestyle; the two are difficult to separate. In my 24-hour period, I consumed media from left wing and right wing sources, and it is easy to see how consumption of media exclusively from one source or another would have a profound influence on one's worldview, because many media forms are trying to sell you something. If not a product, then they are selling you an idea or a lifestyle, as Turow notes. When you become a consumer of a given lifestyle, today there is typically enough of that culture to consume that you can easily become segregated into that lifestyle. I listened to a Rush Limbaugh rant, and I watched a basketball game. If I wanted, I could listen to right wing rants all day and all night; if I wanted I could consume sports 24 hours a day as well. Thus, it is easy to have an entire lifestyle built around specific media products. This represents a significant change from Turow's description of how media used to be consumed, and it represents an attempt to polarize America by splitting people into easily-defined consumption groups.

Interaction with the Media

For most of human history, we did not have such intense media interaction. McLuhan argued that in his time fifty years ago, we were still adjusting to the electric age, wherein we continued to view the world through the pre-electric lens, even though we were consuming ever-increasing amounts of media. Television was still relatively new back then. Today, his prophesy still holds. We might have adjusted the way that we think to the television age, but as Turow (1997) points out, marketers have moved far beyond that. My daily interaction with the media was near-constant, and when different media forms informed my interactions with the world, it becomes clear that thinking in older paradigms is not going to explain anything. Our understanding of our interactions with media has not kept up with the way that the media understands its interactions with us. We are guided by marketers into this silos, where the media we consume defines us, and where we tend to interact only within the framework of these silos. Yet we still tend to view the media in a more generalized sense. We see ourselves as being distinct from the media we consume, as though we can just choose to stop our consumption any time we want.

Reality tells a different story. When I learned something (via email), I Googled it to learn more. This is a much higher level of interaction with the media than we would have had even in McLuhan's time, much less in the pre-electricity age. Does it create a certain vulnerability, that we have apparently become some completely dependent on media forms for our interactions with the world? Turow certainly would argue that this is the case. Yet, as Fenton points out, it is the speed of information exchange and the ease of use that compels us to use this plethora of media forms. I might live a little faster, and gain a little bit more knowledge, from my exposure to so much media. I think about the passive consumption in particular, as facts and tidbits came to me simply by the media being activated in my presence. Invariably, this gives marketers more opportunity to shape our consumption patterns, but it also allows us to manage a more complex world. Ideally we would gain from this. In some senses, like being able to communicate with distant family, there are clear gains, but in other instances this high level of media consumption is more ambiguous.

Conclusions

Studying the media consumption for a day provides insight into just how intense my interactions with media are. They are constant. The media forms offer value, but they come at a cost because now media is the intermediary through which our interactions with the world are conducted. We seldom interact without the use of media, and while such interactions are still valued, I noticed that spending time with a friend was in the context of shared media consumption. So we were still part of that particular media consumption lifestyle, and it was made very easy for us with that establishment that specializes in that form of consumption. Thinking about how easy consumption is, and what benefits companies can gain from making media consumption so easy and so compelling, makes me question allowing myself such a high level of dependence.