BB2: Media Tracking

# BB2: Media Tracking Both BB2 and BB3 exercises will raise the awareness of your own activities online and help you 'dive into' lived experience from an ethnographic perspective. These exercises can help reveal some of the typically hidden structures, frames, and patterns of experience. The Media Tracking assignment is designed to explore and challenge our positive and negative assumptions about "how youth use social media." Different techniques allow you to study at a close level your own experiences and feelings about your relationship to or use of digital technologies. This can yield rich data you can build on or repeat for your exam. Minimally, you should complete the following: **A) Plan media tracking** Write out a plan for how you will track your media use for 48 hours (include date). Consider how you will take notes on time, duration, activity, and any other observations you want to include (location, how you felt while using, how other people acted in response to your use mediated or material world, what you notice about other people using media, patterns in your use, intentions for use, unintended consequences of use, social activity, who you communicate with, channel switching, motivations for use, social expectations, etc etc etc). Perhaps your mappings from BB1 would be helpful to think about what your "field" site looks like? - Look for your phone/media embedded tracking options - Test screen recording **B) Track your social/digital media use according to plan for 48 hours** Be honest, be thorough. You’re seeking to generate rich and detailed data, which comes from your own tracking. Use whatever technology is useful for you. Try out different strategies to get the best log-data. Minimally, you need to log your usage in a way that could be submitted as part of your Building Block, and take video footage and screenshots, and other recordings of your usage. - Consider also how to organize and archive your notes/recordings. This is really important, as you don’t want to lose anything. **C) Reflections** After doing the tracking, create some short "pieces" to reflect on your usage, your feelings, and any analytical thoughts you have about your usage. You will do this using your "raw" recordings taken from step B. 1. **Vlog 1**: First, create a short vlog (video log) (2 minutes at least) where you 'walk through' your social media use. That is, a very **straight description of your usage in the screen-recording** (If you don’t like doing vlogs, you can write, map, etc, but be thorough!). 2. **Vlog 2** where you narrate or do a voiceover of a segment of your "raw" video footage, focusing on the simple question: **"What am I doing here?" or the more complex question: "what is going on here?"**. This is a deeper description than the first vlog (a more psychological or philosphical questioning). 3. **Vlog 3** where you narrate or do a voiceover of a segment of your "raw" video footage, focusing on the simple question: **"Why did I do X versus Y?"**. Here, you might explore your motivations for making certain actions, clicking on certain items, moving your hands in certain ways, and other very minute details of your interaction. 4. **Vlog 4** where you narrate or do a voiceover of a segment of your "raw" video footage, focusing on emotions: **"What was I feeling while doing that?”, or “How does it make me feel to watch myself doing that?”** All of this is due on September 27th. That is plenty of time, but don’t just do it all last minute! Remember to be thorough, concrete, and detailed. ## BB2 extended (practical) guide - **Keep pen and paper at hand!** A lot of data will be easier to collect this way - If for some reason tracking your phone is too complicated (e.g. you don't have enough space), try to track your computer use ### Some ideas (non-conclusive ) of things you can track: - time spent - apps used - type of interaction - activity periods - habits (regular behaviour) - location and usage (where do you use what) - metadata (when and why do I pick up my phone?) - battery consumption, etc. ### Example(s) of track plan **Interval:** Friday 18th September morning (08.00) to Sunday 20th september morning (08:00) |What to track? | Why I am tracking this? | How will I do this?| |------------------------|------------------------------------|--------------------------| |Instagram, Whatsapp and Facebook|I use these apps constantly, they make a great part of my quotidian digital life|Video log, handwritten notes, asking myself questions| |A specified period of time: my media use after waking up and before going to bed|I am aware that there are two times a day where I can predict that I will definitely be on my phone using social media. This is right after I wake up and right before I go to bed. This is why I figured this time period is particularly interesting, especially in terms of why do I need this routine? and what happens during this time that is has become so necessary for me in everyday life?|Screen recording, handwritten notes| |Statistical data about media usage|The data I will be gathering here for is mainly to have a backbone structure and basic information on how often I use Instagram, Whatsapp and Facebook, since it will not offer me insight of my feelings, thoughts etc. It will give me broad information on how much time I spend on these platforms and which time a day and I am planning on using it in order to seek out patterns in my media usage.|App: memory| ### Where/How to gather your data: - Pen and paper! Taking "field" notes is usually a bulletproof technique - Activity logs: some platforms provide a detalied list of interactions (e.g. facebook activity log, youtube history, instagram's "posts you've liked") - Web browser history ### Tools/apps: <span style="color:red">*If you find an app/technique that fits well, please add it as a comment (like in google docs: select text -> click comment) , and I'll include it in the guide*</span> **Phone tracking**: - moment (mac) https://inthemoment.io/ - quality time (android) https://www.qualitytimeapp.com/ - social fever (android) https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.systweak.social_fever&hl=en_US **Computer tracking**: - Rescue time (multiplatform, trial): https://www.rescuetime.com/premium - timing (mac) https://timingapp.com/ - apps tracker (windows) https://sourceforge.net/projects/appstracker/ **PC recording**: - OBS (open source/free, multiplatform, advanced but highly recommendable)https://obsproject.com/download - Camtasia (multiplatform, trial) https://www.techsmith.com/video-editor.html **Phone recording** - android screen recording **Video editing**: - is quite likely that your phone already includes this (in the case of android phones, the "google photos" app has an edit button, which includes a slider to crop videos) - Camtasia (multiplatform) https://www.techsmith.com/video-editor.html ### Video recording example <iframe src="https://player.vimeo.com/video/458310882?title=0&byline=0&portrait=0" width="296" height="641" frameborder="0" allow="autoplay; fullscreen" allowfullscreen></iframe> I recorded this with the screen recording app already included in my phone (android). **I first screen-recorded my use of a platform. And then I played that video with screen-recording activated again to voice over it** (I just had to change the audio to "from mic" in the app settings). *This is only a technical test. I was not answering any particular questions* (like the ones from the vlogs). One thing that I immediately realised is that I was "doing" things faster than I could "describe" them. This is something you may need to consider. You can, for example, pause the video while continuing the voiceover if you feel like you need to expand on your description. ### Questions pool **Some examples of questions that can fuel your tracking design** *These are just examples! You don't have to follow this questions* - Am I seeing clearly about my media use routine? - Am I using the media too much? Is it consuming too much time and energy of my time? Is it necessary to be connected all the time? - How responsive I am when notifications appear? Why? - Why I use some software or app more often than others? For which purpose(s)? Are there other purposes too? - Apart from the software and app in focus, am I using other programs a lot unknowingly that I should to add to the "watch out" list? - Am I using the media wisely (or at least) in a creative way? - If I am too attached to the media, should I find some tools to detach myself more from the screen?