... Yet Without Information, We Are Nothing

by Jack Loechner, May 5, 2010, 8:16 AM

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A new study, conducted by the International Center for Media & the Public Agenda (ICMPA) and students at the Phillip Merrill College of Journalism, University of Maryland, "24 Hours: Unplugged," asked 200 students at the College Park campus to give up all media for 24 hours. After their 24 hours of abstinence, the students were then asked to blog on private class websites about their experiences, to report their successes and admit to any failures. The 200 students wrote more than 110,000 words, about the same number of words as a 400-page novel.

Susan D. Moeller, a journalism professor at the University of Maryland and the director of the International Center for Media and the Public Agenda which conducted the study, noted that "We were surprised by how many students admitted that they were 'incredibly addicted' to media... but we noticed that what they wrote at length about was how they hated losing their personal connections. Going without media meant, in their world, going without their friends and family."

The absence of information, the feeling of not being connected to the world, was among the things that caused the most anxiety in students as they sought to learn about the role of media in their lives by completing an assignment that asked them to spend a day without using media.

They cared about what was going on among their friends and families; they cared about what was going on in their community; they even cared about what was going on in the world at large. But most of all they cared about being cut off from that instantaneous flow of information that comes from all sides and does not seemed tied to any single device or application or news outlet.

According to this study, students get their news and information in a disaggregated way, often through friends texting via cell phone, or Facebooking, emailing and IM-ing via their laptops.  Students are aware of different media platforms, but students have only a casual relationship to actual news outlets. In fact students rarely make fine distinctions between information that is "news" and information that is "personal."

Students reported in this study that, while they missed their music and their movies and their TV programs, they found that going media-free resulted in a greater, all-encompassing loss... missing "information." And  information, they discovered, was a precious commodity; one that they used to define themselves in comparison to their peers. One student said he realized that he suddenly had less information than everyone else, regardless of whether that information involved "news, class information, scores, or what happened on Family Guy."

The  Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project reported that "text messaging has become the primary way that teens reach their friends... noting that... half of teens send 50 or more text messages a day, or 1,500 texts a month, and one in three send more than 100 texts a day, or more than 3,000 texts a month."

The ICMPA study noted a similar phenomenon, although the college students, close to 20 years old on average, were even greater senders of text messages, with a number of participants in the almost 200-person study reporting that they sent over 5,000 text messages a month, and one woman reporting that she sends over 9,000 a month.

Two years ago, in 2008, Pew reported that the Internet had overtaken newspapers as the primary source of campaign news in the United States, and that, for the first time, younger Americans sought national and international news as much from online sources as they did from television news outlets. Today, University of Maryland undergraduates not only rarely mention television and newspapers when discussing their news consumption during Media Literacy classes; they show no significant loyalty to a news program, news personality or even news platform.

A student wrote, "This technology craze has become so deeply ingrained in each of us we know no other way of living our lives, but to rely on our cell phones, laptops, televisions, and iPods to keep us occupied and connected with the world around us... "

Students may differ in their dependency on different devices and their appetite for different media, but an undeniable common denominator that came through in their comments, says the report, was their demand for and dependency on instant access to information, information so omnipresent that it has become the essential background to their lives.

The report summarizes three elements of the conclusion by separating suggested "takeaways" into a focus on academia, innovators and the media:

 

• For universities, the takeaway is that those who teach must have a basic comprehension of how students find, share and experience media so that students can be taught about the role of media in their lives.
  
  
• For developers of media technologies, the takeaway is that the most important thing to students is whatever latest technology can connect them the quickest to the people they most value.
  
  
• For journalists, the takeaway is that the readers and viewers of the future see them as both irrelevant and indispensable. Students don't care about newspapers or TV news broadcasts or even blogs, but covet the information that comes to them through a diverse and circuitous pathway of devices, platforms, applications and sites. 

 

The participating class, JOUR 175: Media Literacy, that undertook this 24-hour media-free assignment, is a "core course" for the entire student body across all majors. It is a class of 200 students, characterized by a diversity of age, race, ethnicity, religion and nationality. The students self-identified themselves and claim their own demographic characteristics:

 

• 75.6% of the students in JOUR 175 self-identify as Caucasian/White, 9.4% as Black, 6.3% as Asian, 1.6% as Latino, 3.1% as Mixed Race and 3.9% as Other. Students who self-reported themselves as non-American, said they were from China, South Korea, Sri Lanka and Ethiopia. Women outnumbered men, 55.9% to 44.1%.
  
  
• 44.1% of the class said that their parents or guardians earned over $100,000 or more; 28.3% that their parents or guardians earned between $75-$100,000; 22% come from a household with an income between $50-75,000; and 5.5% said that their families' income was between $25-50,000.
  
  
• 40.9% were first-year students, 40.9% were sophomores, 11% were juniors, and 7.1% were seniors or beyond. Most students reported their ages as between 18-21; the average class age was 19.5.

 

For additional information about the study, please visit the University news desk here. Or, for a summary of conclusions, visit here.

 

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0 comments on "... Yet Without Information, We Are Nothing".

1. Donna Gordon from Investment Resources
   

   commented on: May 5, 2010 at 3:02 p.m.

   As a parent of teens I can attest to this preoccupation with being tied into media 24/7. On one hand they are so much more informed and savvy about what is going on but on the other hand they are not getting the experience and interaction that are more common in the 'real world' I do limit their 'screen time' but it is a constant struggle as most parents do not, so am constantly hearing but my friends get to do blah blah blah

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