Assignment2

After browsing through my other classmates’ websites, I find some of their common elements, presented below.

Reason for taking this class:

The most common reasons are to learn more about the impact of new media on us and how to utilize new media in the future. This sounds reasonable to me, since we mainly know about media from its effect on us, and some of us may want to use it to influence others. Reasons for some students (Nitish, Rahul) also include their interest in history of media.

Media Usage:

Almost all students consume media content through computer and cellphone on a daily basis, while a smaller portion of students uses television. Application wise, all students consume media for at least one of the three reasons, social, informational and entertainment, with majority using for all three reasons. Vast majority of students uses social media apps, like Facebook and Twitter, and some also uses localized social media apps from their home countries, like Wechat. For informational, most students browse news from google/youtube, learn about technology and study online lecture. Newspaper and television channels are no longer used as ways of reading news. Unsurprisingly, entertainment is the most described portion in most students’ media consumption report. Video/Series are two of the most common media students in CS656 use. A lot of students watches series like “Game of Thrones”, while some watch classic series like “Friends”. Notably, there is a considerable amount of gamers in this class, with games like “League of Legend”, “Overwatch” being the common games, representing popular game genres of MOBA and FPS. Most of the gamers also watch gaming videos/streams, some even spend more time watching streamer than playing games. Very few students actually still read books for entertainment.

Overall, I think the common patterns in media consumption, described above, reveals how ingrained internet/mobile device are into our daily life, almost completely outweighing traditional medias like newspaper and TV News.