Media and Society Blog Assignment Day 5 and Conclusion

March 31, Sunday

Immediately after waking up, I opened my laptop to read emails and news on Inquirer.net. I remembered that it’s supposed to be the last day of the three-game series between the Arkansas Razorbacks and Mississippi State Bulldogs so I checked on the Hogs’ Facebook page to see if they have links for live streaming online. Much to my delight, they posted a link to ESPN3’s live streaming of the game!

This is a lie. The truth is I don’t know how to get there on foot.

During the game intervals, advertisements of Internet Explorer for Windows 8 and a deodorant were played over and over.

After the game, I saw a friend’s post of a full documentary on a mythological creature in the Philippines called aswang. I watched the The Aswang Phenomenon, a documentary produced by Canadian company High Banks Entertainment.

At 7:15p.m. I watched Les Misérables with a friend at their house. For more than two hours and a half, we were there, with jaws dropped admiring every scene and every note (and remembering how Lea Salonga played Eponine so well on Broadway).

At 11p.m., I couldn’t sleep. After watching the documentary Toughest Place To Be A Bus Driver, I watched the 10th anniversary concert of Les Misérables on YouTube.

Overall Summary

When I decided to pick this choice assignment, I had two questions in mind:

1. Is it possible to avoid media even for a day?
2. Is it easy, or even possible, to measure how much one’s media diet?

I could not answer the question until the very last day. The whole time, I was experimenting on my media consumption, trying to avoid it whenever possible.

I felt the need to constantly check whatever was going on. If I am just sitting there doing nothing, I would check my Facebook newsfeed, check Twitter, check email, play music, click on a YouTube link posted by someone on Facebook, play some more music, turn on my roommate’s tv, flip another page of the National Geographic book, read the international section and opinion section of the newspaper, answer the Sudoku puzzle on the entertainment section, the list goes on forever. It’s simply impossible.

It is trying not to imagine a cloud when somebody said, “Don’t think of a cloud.”

Also, I am not just a receiver of the information. Sharing on Facebook, Twitter and sending links through emails made me an agent, or a mediator, of the information to the next person who will consume it, who then has the option to either end the cycle there or share it again.

Today’s media also lets me engage in the talks regarding issues. I can give a feedback fast. What’s even more interesting is that I can even see what others are thinking, or what their views and stands are.

The second question was easy to answer. I found that out on the very first day. Measuring one’s media diet is never easy. I could never trust my estimates. Product placements (or embedded marketing, as some would call it) in movies, for example, are so hard to pinpoint (mostly because I just don’t care).

Also, outdoor advertising are inescapably everywhere that it is hard not to notice most of them. However, I don’t even look at most of them long enough to know what they really are all about. I would immediately remove gaze, especially if it has a poor and confusing layout.

After putting too much thoughts into it, I realized a day wouldn’t pass without at least one media contact, especially in this industrialized and very modern country. Ask someone who takes the university transit every day, when was the last time a bus ride was completed without noticing the advertisements above head? Another realization is that no matter how hard we try to avoid it, the media will reach us. Ask someone who’s on Facebook all the time, when was the last time a Facebook advertisement was accidentally clicked while trying to chat someone? Probably just minutes before you asked. Try looking for someone who hasn’t seen 15-second advertisement before a YouTube video.

While the media developed, we, too, changed a lot. It has made everything so easy for us. As social beings, we took advantage of it, and we can only hope that its appeal to us would always result to something desirable, something beneficial.