NIck Layman's Blog

For this week’s blog assignment, students of this class were given the job of following and keeping tabs of their daily media consumption. I chose to do my class assignment yesterday (Thursday) due to having an enormous course load. Wouldn’t recommend taking four accelerated courses towards the end of the semester! Thursday was just like any other normal day in terms of what my schedule looks like. However, when I take a look back at how much media I consume it is somewhat alarming for me. Regardless, I hope your looking forward to reading my media schedule!

6:00am: At this time of day, I am just getting up. The situation is comparable to a fire drill rather than a graceful wakening due to the fact that I need multiple alarms to wake up. After showering and putting myself together I begin to make myself coffee. At this point, I open my phone and check my socials. The sources I usually go to for everything are Instagram and X. These social media platforms I don’t take seriously when it comes to making informed decisions. From my observation, misinformation runs rampant on social media and a lot of people repost content that is tailored to how they feel about any situation regardless of facts. Accounts that often pop on my X feed are Mario Nawfal, Collin Rugg, and Simon Ateba.

8:30am: After finishing my workout, I shower one more time before my day. I usually am listening to the Spotify throughout the duration of this period. Personally, I like to listen to fast passed music when I work out with genres such as EDM and Metal. Then I will taper off and listen to chill beats or alternative after my workout to get settled into my day.

8:45am: This is my favorite part of the day because at this point I will check the Wall Street Journal which is my favorite news source. They push content that is non bias and allows me to formulate my opinions on real time events. The article that I happened to read that morning was Schumer Says He Criticized Netanyahu to Save Israel by Lindsay Wise.

9:00am: During this time, I begin my schoolwork which was particularly long this day. The classes that I worked on were Search Engine Research Strategy, Mafia Film, and Misinformation and Society.

12:00pm: At this point, I have been working for three hours straight and needed to take a break. I went outside and took got some fresh air and then went back inside and scrolled around on Instagram reels. Nothing of substance is on my Instagram reels. Basically, just a bunch of memes and nonsense. It makes me want to reset my algorithm.

4:00pm: I finished my course work for the day, and I am absolutely exhausted. This is when I went into my bed to lay down and took a two-hour power nap.

6:00pm: After my nap, I began going on YouTube shorts. I’m beginning to believe I have an addiction to the reel form of content. Thank God for not having TikTok. After looking at a reel from the Shawn Ryan Show, I began to watch one of the podcasts through YouTube. I watched the interview Shawn did with Tim Kennedy who was a Green Beret and a former UFC fighter. This show is leans more to the right of the political spectrum but that doesn’t bother me too much. That is because I enjoy hearing the stories of service men and women Shawn brings on the show.

11:00pm: After watching that entire podcast I then proceeded to fall asleep again. That ended my coverage of my daily media journal.

At the end of this exercise, it made me realize one of two things. The first part being that I consume a lot of media. If you are taking into account audio and visual consumption of some form of media it’s easily over half of my day. Secondly, I come across a lot of questionable and misleading information. Most of this information comes from X and Instagram but it could just as easily be in mainstream news. The Wall Street Journal thankfully takes a lot of that problem away from me. When it comes to any type of information or news that is being reported I am always skeptical. Everyone has an opinion or agenda, so you need to take what you consume at face value. My personal mediator for all media is The Wall Street Journal.