Watching, Clicking, and Being Watched: Rethinking My Role as a Media Audience
For this reflective blog, I chose to return to my original post, “Am I Just Watching, or Am I Participating? My Role as a Media Audience.” When I first wrote that blog, I understood my media use mainly through the difference between being passive and being active. I considered myself passive when I scrolled through TikTok, binged Netflix or put music on in the background, but active when I researched, responded to texts, or decided what I wanted to play next. When I consider these categories, I think that was a productive first step in a thought process but one I failed to deeply reflect on. I was much more concerned with whether I was consuming media passively or actively, rather than considering the ways that media platforms dictate whether consumption is an act of selecting or merely receiving.
Another idea that helped my understanding on this topic relates to a difference between a "spectator/user" and a "consumer/prosumer". I previously noted in the first blog post, I was a user and not simply a consumer of my surrounding media environment. After reviewing the course concepts, I can see that this point needed more development. A spectator sounds like someone who simply watches, while a user is more involved. A prosumer goes even further because they both consume and produce media (Savage). My media log outlines this theory clearly. I was not only watching videos or shows. I was also using Google to search for cars, replying to Snapchat messages, using YouTube for parenting videos, helping my daughter with a school project, and using online platforms for school planning. Even when I thought I was only consuming media, I was often making choices, interpreting content, and adding to the circulation of media through my clicks, searches, and responses.
A second concept that expands my original post is the “networked information economy” from Unit 7. Benkler’s reading helps explain how digital networks create new ways for people to produce, share, and access information outside of older one-way media systems (Benkler). This helped me identify that my media use is not merely separated into confined categories, like entertainment, school, parenting, and social life. Instead, all these sections of my life are connected through digital networks. For example, my phone was not just a device for relaxation. It was also where I checked messages, searched for information, listened to music, watched parenting videos, and stayed connected with family and friends. My laptop was also not just for school; it was connected to emails, planning, assignments, and even AI outlets. This makes my original perspective more complex because my media use was not only about what I watched. It was also about how digital platforms organize my daily life and make different tasks flow into each other seamlessly.
Unit 8 caused me to reflect on the not-so-positive aspect of our engagement on social media platforms. Ideas about “commodification” and “surveillance” indicate our participation online is not completely innocent and private. After reviewing Werbin’s account of social media, I realized that the data users generate can be collected and used for commercial purposes (Werbin). When looking back at my media log, I saw my own interactions on social media differently. What I considered my private actions, such as searching for videos, liking pages, viewing videos, clicking, and scrolling, became data used by platforms to collect, sort, and manage. In my blog entry, I explained that my content consumption is curated by algorithms, I did not fully explain how this phenomenon operates. I realized that algorithms not only help me discover content, but they also play a significant role in determining our value based on the data generated from our online participation.
Overall, my perspective on my own blog has developed and it is now something I understand much more holistically. I know now that my relationship with media is more than just consuming and creating. It is about being part of a media environment where personal routines, public communication, platform power, and commercial interests are all connected. My original blog helped me notice that I move between passive and active audience roles, but the later readings helped me see that even “active” participation is not always free or neutral. In today’s digital media environment, I am not just watching media. I am using it, shaping it, being shaped by it, and sometimes being used by it too.
Works Cited
Benkler, Yochai. “Introduction: A Moment of Opportunity and Challenge.” The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom, Yale UP, 2006, pp. 1–28.
Savage, Philip. “Audiences Are Key.” Mediascapes: New Patterns in Canadian Communication, edited by Leslie Regan Shade, 4th ed., Nelson Education, 2014.
Werbin, Kenneth C. “Social Media, Commodification, and Surveillance.” Mediascapes: New Patterns in Canadian Communication, edited by Leslie Regan Shade, 4th ed., Nelson Education, 2014, pp. 258–277.