Media Exposure

Anyone can do media.

I don't post a lot on Instagram or Facebook or Twitter. My friends would say I'm fairly inactive on social media. But, of course, any individual can "do" media. Anyone can create an account and become a self-made publisher. So even though I didn't post anything this weekend, I was still featured twice on the Carnegie Mellon Women's Soccer Team Instagram page, @tartansoccer. Anyone can do media, and they can publish just about anything they want, which means anyone can be featured on media - whether they chose to or not!

But media is personal.

Even though anyone can do media, it's still personal. At least in the sense that it is personalizable. GoogleMaps provides me with precise instructions on how to get somewhere via public transportation - that's information that is completely and solely relevant to me. Nike ID allows me to design a pair of running shoes exactly how I want them. These forms of media pass control to the user, and we can get just what we want out of them.

Media thinks that it knows you.

Netflix tells me what shows I might enjoy. Spotify provides me with new songs I'll probably like every week. Pinterest features articles and images I would potentially find interesting. The Amazon home pages displays four categories of products that are all essentially the same: Related to Items You've Viewed, More Items to Consider, Inspired by Your Browsing History, and Additional Items to Explore.

Media is making itself relevant by getting to know me. I don't generally notice when media applications are selecting content to display to me - I just absorb it automatically. Even though I don't realize it, my media experience is being streamlined by algorithms and functions that predict what media I am likely to want to consume.

But media still gives you what you want.

Media is so powerful in the way that it provides useful information. When looking for a place to go out to dinner, I immediately and easily found the phone number, hours, and address of a restaurant. The Maps application has a built in Yelp tool, which gave me images and reviews from previous guests.

Pinterest is full of great ideas - from fashion to beauty to workout tips to crafts to recipes. It's a great way to find inspiration and how-to's.   

Both of these examples use media to source ideas from other people. The electronic community is vast and full of valuable information from strangers with similar interests or experiences. 

And media connects you to people you know. 

I often think of social media just revolving around Instagram likes and Facebook profile pictures. But upon closer examination of how I use social media daily, I realize it's much more than that. I can see the shoes that my friend Raina likes on Pinterest. I can listen to a playlist made by my buddy Sasha on Spotify. I can even get a better look into my brother's life by becoming Facebook friends with his fraternity house dog. These are all people I know and care about, and the media allows me to interact with them in many different ways.

The media can provide you with information from strangers and allow you to engage with friends and family, but it can also create community. A friend of the family has a very sick son who has been in the Pediatric ICU for over a month now. Every day, his grandfather posts updates to Facebook, where an amazing community of over 3,000 people (friends and strangers alike) have joined to support, donate, and pray for this family.

One of my most used forms of social media is Snapchat. I don't generally think of it as a media form, but it is. It allows you to see your friends, what they are doing, or where they are. A picture (or video) is worth a thousand words! My favorite feature of Snapchat is geotag filters, which show me that Kelley is at Villanova and Audrey is at Brown!

And media tries to broaden your horizons.

Spotify provides lists of top charts in the country and in the world. There's also a section for new releases from various artists to expose you to new songs. Ad bars like this Nordstrom's one invade websites unrelated to clothing shopping to try to get you to focus on something else. The Discover page of Snapchat provides concise but engaging presentation of news, events, and articles from various sources. These are all examples where the media is trying to get you to consume more media.

Reflection:

I’ve always got my phone with me, but I’d never realized how much media I actually consume because of that. Being conscientious and aware of how I encountered media, even just for a day, has made me realize it’s even more pervasive than I’d previously thought.

The most profound thing I learned from this exercises is that media involves you, whether you like it or realize it or not. You can be featured on someone else’s media channel. You can engage with tools that are personalized to suit your needs exactly. You can connect in non-traditional ways. You can be exposed to information that is tailored to your particular preferences. And you can be directed towards new types of information or different media methods. I didn’t necessarily consider scrolling through Instagram or Pinterest while waiting for the bus as active engagement with media, but closer observation reveals that even this is still influential and engaging.

All the various types of media I explored in this exercise seem to have the goal of getting the user to consume more media. Maybe that’s direct, by promoting different things or directing you to new material. Or maybe it’s subtler, by suiting your needs and satisfying your requirements so that you are inclined and motivated to continue to use it. Either way, the media is rather effective in getting people to consume more and more media, without necessarily realizing how engaged they have become.