My Tracking Plan

The purpose of this blog entry is to create an estimated tracking plan of my social media use. The point is to plan and explain how, when and why I will be tracking my own social media use. Also this entry serves as 'checkpoint' as I will be listing both the overall and the more specific plan for tracking my social media use this fall.

In general (long-term plan):

• Brain Dumps. These will serve the purpose of getting 'raw data' to work with later on in the course. Also the Brain Dumps serve as inspiration and 'pacemakers'. 
• Screen Dump(s). These in-the-moment still frames will serve the purpose of trying to grasp my user experience of engaging in social media (i.e. 'how did it look at the point of engaging?')
• Vlog will be executed in order to visually track and discover social media use patterns, routines and habits. The vlog will also be part of my 'raw data collection'.
• Fasting for 24 hours (radical media diet): Since I use social media on a daily basis, a fasting would be a (great?) way to distance myself from the social practice I engage in every day. From a distance it might be easier to discover and analyze patterns and twitches towards one thing or the other.

 

More specifically (48-hour plan):

• I will be tracking my social media use closely for 48 hours from Friday 18th October at 9 AM to Sunday 20th October at 9 AM.
• In order to do this I will be noting all social media use for 48 hours (including all activities on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, Pinterest, Skype, blogs etc.)
• I will be having an Excel document open and available at all times, while tracking myself. Within this document I will be noting:
• The social media engaged in (e.g. Facebook, Twitter).
• The exact time of day (e.g. 20.34).
• Duration (e.g. 14 minutes).
• Purpose (e.g. 'checking up on pbworks for updates on readings').
• Result (fulfillment of the purpose, e.g. 'I came to get updated and I did' or 'I came to get updated but nothing had happened since the last time I checked').
• I will not be editing nor censoring the document while tracking. 
• I will be carrying around my pen-and-paper research journal, in case I check social media on other devices than my stationary PC. I will then be transferring the notes into the Excel document in order to get all of the notes gathered.