Mass Media and Me Birdontherun, August 30, 2026September 7, 2026 This is my recollection of my day, and the media that I consumed during that day, and my thoughts and analysis regarding that. My prediction is that I will be very surprised by just how much media I ended up collecting and consuming during my total day. 7:00 AM – I usually wake up around 6 AM and prepare for the day, make coffee, then put on some background noise while I drink coffee and compose myself for the day ahead. My go-to is usually the YouTubers Good Mythical Morning. My wife got me into them a few years ago, and it’s funny, easy-flowing morning content. However, I do want to note something that GMM/ other YouTubers and podcasters have done that I feel is not so credible. Take money/sponsorship from BetterHelp. BetterHelp has a notorious, sketchy reputation from those who have used it, and as someone who has looked into therapy options, I’ve been told by those around me not to use them. I think this is a good example of media literacy and fact checking. A lot of innocent people are going to see BetterHelp and think wow if GMM is promoting them, then they must be a good service and will let that endorsement cloud their judgment. I think especially in this age of sponsorship, everyone needs to take a good, hard look at who is paying money to get good publicity from your favorite creators. 10:00 AM – I leave for work around 8 and start around 9. I am at my case for about an hour getting my route set for the day. When I leave at 10, I set up my music for the day. I would like to use today’s music as a good example of how a lie can spread around the world before the truth wakes up. Jpegmafia, one of the musicians I am listening to today, released a new album this year. It had a song, “Tsar Bomb”, and after it came out, someone claiming to be a friend of a band spread this whole story that Jpeg used his friend’s music as a sample in this song and that Jpeg refused to give them credit. This caught like a wildfire, and people were thoroughly ripping Jpeg. Well, it turns out that Jpeg and this band were just discussing and working on negotiating payment and credit for this sample, and this friend was probably just using the online outrage to try and shame Jpeg and give the band some leverage in negotiations. I was among many people who were quick to criticize Jpeg before getting the full story, so I learned and hope others do that in many, many cases. It’s worth it to get both sides of the story before letting the lie run around and take the truth. 4:00 PM – On my lunch, I do some light browsing on Reddit. My go-to subreddit is r/Fauxmoi. I like their mix of news and information, and I feel they are more on my side of beliefs and politics. I saw a headline about Mark Ruffalo being accused of being an anti-semite. This instantly stood out to me as being a suspicious headline and being more to the story. It turns out Ruffalo simply stated his support for Palestine and thus, like many, simply being in support of Palestine apparently makes an anti-semite. This is a great example of disinformation, Pro-Israel groups have started this campaign to label anyone pro-Palestine as an anti-semite, which gets posted to the news, and the average person sees the headline of someone being anti-semite and instantly makes their judgment against Ruffalo instead of actually looking into the details. I think we could make a whole module about the disinformation campaign of these pro-Israel groups. 8:00 PM – I finally get to clock out for the day. As I drive home, I like to put on some baseball games. I have found lately that my audio broadcast of games is littered with gambling ads. Whether it’s in the game itself by the radio broadcast, or in between innings ads. Gambling in general seems so integrated in sports, and I find myself uncomfortable with it as a whole. I think there is a lot of literature out there that feels the same way about this as I do, I found this one to be really insightful. I fear that a lot of younger people are going to fall into this cycle of gambling addiction because all they are being fed is how easy and simple it is to win, and that creates a dangerous mindset. I think there is a lot of misinformation out there about the accessibility of gambling and that is creating dangerous pathways into a serious addiction. 9:00 PM – Between my two classes, I have a lot of reading to do, so I like to put on light study music while I read, and this has been my favorite. 11:00 PM – It’s finally time to sleep. As I get to bed each night, I like to put on rain sounds. We can end this with a more lighthearted misinformation. If you enjoy listening to rain sounds at night, you might be listening to frying foods in all actuality. I really love that Snopes did a serious investigation on this. I really had a lot of fun doing this. I am surprised that I didn’t consume more media, but also my job involves a lot of driving, so that’s just a product of being safe. This did make me realize how much of what we consume is affected by or has ties to misinformation/disinformation, like GMM or the Mark Ruffalo post. It really is entailed in every part of our life, and we really do need to be willing to question who is sponsoring our content creators or who is really behind online shame campaigns. A lot of our module readings have been about staying vigilant and not assuming everything you read doesn’t have outlier motives. I think my media diary for this day has proven that this is a necessary tool and skill to have for our day to day media interactions. Uncategorized