Network media-Analysis blog: Evaluation

Reflecting on my posts it is quite clear that I’m a passive consumer of online content rather than an active participant of the content I consume and create online. Not only that but that a vast majority of the classmates week long documentation is relatively similar to my own.

This got me thinking why in the web 2.0 era, where content can be authored by everyday people that we all have been actively passive when it comes to media online. Was I more active online back when I was first online and if so what has changed over that last few years online that has made me become less so? Or is it because the quality of the content online is at this point at the same level, if not better than what’s being offered within more established media forms? Has the accessibility of the internet and the mountains of choice slowly pacified us?

From looking back at my week of online observation I tended to go back and use/ view similar things in a ritualistic fashion. I wake up in the morning, listen to a series of podcasts that I had been listening to for a while, then watch videos from my subscription feed on youtube. Rarely did I go outside that zone of habit or search for different content. Maybe this is due to the over-saturation of content online that we tend to cling to things we are comfortable with since there is so much ‘bad’ content online that we have to sift through to find something good. I belive this touches on how we value our time now, the idea that we need to fill every second of our day with some sort of visual or noise even if we aren’t in the mood to listen to something.

It could also be due to the ‘suggestion’ and ‘trending’ functions of such sites as Youtube, Facebook and Twitter that has lulled us into the ruts that we can’t get out of, only ever seeing content that the site suggests that we would like based on previous videos and our searching history.