Week 5 Task Responses, 21st August.

Survey Rationale;

This survey on social media use was created as I was interested to collect information on how, why and what my fellow peers use social media for.

I have sent ten emails out to my friends and family to seek to find why social media is popular and what main uses do people have for it.

So far I have had zero responses to my survey.

Task 2)
Which social media do you use regularly?

At the moment I currently use Facebook and Instagram most regularly. They are interlinked websites and they are a good way to keep in contact with your friends and see what they are doing from day to day. Instagram is more based on photos where the only writing that is involved is captions or other peoples comments on photos, while Facebook is reading, writing and photos.

What do you get out of Social Media?

I guess I am a little ashamed to say it, but I love the stalking factor of social media. I like that I know what people are doing, what they are eating and where they are eating it. I found it’s a good way to pick up on new trends and trendy areas. It is a platform where lots of different people and tastes come together and we can all share our knowledge, tips and thoughts with each other via photos or status updates.

Is your use of social media going up? Down? Changing to a different platform?

My social media use at this current time is actually going down. Maybe because I am getting a bit older (21-22) and have other things to worry about rather than taking selfies (photos of myself) and putting them on the internet. I also don’t feel the need to have a lot of attention anymore, as opposed to when I was younger (17-19.) In many ways I think I am genuinely starting to grow out of most things that used to attract me to social media originally. At this point in time I use social media (Facebook mostly) to keep in contact with friends and family who are overseas.

Task 3)

This week’s lecture started off with some discussion about social media and more predominantly it turned into, social media vs. the news. The imperative role of social media was discussed in the quick widespread global news of Michael Jackson’s death in 2010. As many people found out about his death via the internet and social media sites, rather than on a news story on the television. It was really quite interesting as a few years ago; breaking news would have to have first been filtered through journalists and then delivered to the public via newspaper, radio or television. These days all you need is a smart phone handy to deliver breaking news and access to the internet. It got me thinking about to how daily newspapers are becoming a redundant source for news and how long it will take for television news programs to suffer the same fate, even though they are very relevant today, they too will probably not have a place in years to come just like newspapers have become less popular every year.

It is easy to suggest that with over six billion people in the world and with the help of the internet, the world has turned into a global village and everything has become ‘Glocal.’ With the word  ‘media’ becoming a broad term and now not limited to television, radio or newspaper it has diversified the meaning of communication. This is pretty cool.

-Traditional media vs new media. (2011, Sep 06). Daily News, pp. n/a. Retrieved from    http://search.proquest.com.libraryproxy.griffith.edu.au/docview/887539018?accountid=1454.