When I was tracking my media usage, I paid a lot of attention to what the intention of the media I consumed was. Some of the categories were entertainment, advertisement, social, artistic and time/space filling. I noted patterns in types of media (picture, video, audio) that corresponded with media of different intentions. I noticed that a lot of advertisements are switching from image to video. Ads are moving onto instagram and are getting very hard to miss. When they were first introduced to the platform, there were less of them and most of were in the form of still pictures. Now, every few posts there is some kind of advertisement and a growing number of are videos. In addition to ads moving to video, I noticed that a lot of social media users are posting videos of themselves in addition to, or sometimes instead of pictures. I also noticed that many people will post a posed picture of themselves and then add an image that you see when you swipe that is blurry, or they are caught mid movement. From watching my personal usage, I noticed that most of what I do on my phone when I am engaged is social. If I’m texting, facetiming or calling someone my mind is with me while if I am scrolling instagram, I don’t process anything I look at. I also noticed that when I call versus facetime my boyfriend, the lack of visual stimulus/media makes us both more engaged in the conversation. I noticed that there are a lot of blurred lines between artistic, social[more specifically], the image people create for themselves and advertising media.

Olivea Frischer