CONVERGENCE – What is it and what state it is in?

What is convergence?

1. Definition of CONVERGENCE in Merriam-Webster online dictionary

CONVERGENCE: The act of converging and especially moving toward union or uniformity; especially : coordinated movement of the two eyes so that the image of a single point is formed on corresponding retinal areas.

2.

MIT political scientist Ithiel de Sola Pool, whom Henry Jenkins described as “the prophet of media convergence and quoted from his ‘Technologies of Freedom (1983):

“The process called the “convergence modes” is blurring the lines between media, even between point-to-point communications, such as the post, telephone and telegraph, and mass communications such as the press, radio and television.”

The term convergence has been criticised “for being much too vague and inclusive, and for being a tool of media hype,” according to Espen Ytreberg from University of Oslo (Convergence: Essentially confused?, New Media & Society, 2011 13(3) p. 502-508).

3.

Henry Jenkins himself noted:

“Media convergence is more than simply a technological shift. Convergence alters the relationship between existing technologies, industries, markets, genres, and audiences. Convergence alters the logic by which media industries operate and by which media consumers process news and entertainment. Keep this in mind: convergence refers to a process, not an end point.” From Convergence Culture Where Old and New Media Collide, page 15, 16.

Jenkins is also quoted by Virginia Nightingale in ‘New Media Worlds? Challenges for Convergence’ (2007, page 20)

Convergence A word that describes technological, industrial, cultural and social changes in the ways media circulates within our culture. Some common ideas referenced by the term include the flow of content across multiple media platforms, the cooperation between multiple media industries, the search for new structures of media financing that fall at the interstices between old and new media, and the migratory behaviour of meida audiences who would go almost anywhere in search of the kind of entertainment experiences they want. Perhaps most broadly, media convergence refers to a situation in which multiple media systems coexist and where media content flows fluidly across them. Convergence is understood here as an ongoing process or series of intersections between different media systems, not a fixed relationship (from Jenkins, 2006, p. 382).

Nightingale also quoted Steve Jones and said that the assumption “that digitisation and convergence would result in a mono-media world” did not materialise and “has instead resulted in a dramatic expansion and diversification of media platforms, devices and activities” (Nightingale, 2007, p. 20).

4.

Graham Murdock looks at convergence from three angles.

- The convergence of cultural forms – the bringing about of “all majour forms of expression together in one place for the first time” and “allow users to move through the materials on offer in a range of ways” like “navigators mapping out personal routes.”

- The convergence of communications systems. Murdock quoted from the European Commission’s 1997 Green Paper on convergence as saying “The ability of different network platforms to carry essentially similar kinds of services” and the “coming together” of the telephone, television and personal computer to create new households devices with multiple functions.

- The convergence of corporate ownership. “…By steadily rubbing away the established boundaries between different media sectors and bringing previously separate interests together, innovations in digital technology have led to an unprecedented wave of mergers, acquisitions and partnership agreements, as the major communications companies seek to extend their reach and position themselves to take full advantage of future moves towards system convergence.

From ‘Digital Futures: European Television in the Age of Convergence’ in ‘Television Across Europe’ edited by Jan Wieten

5. Ivar John Erdal in his article ‘Coming to Terms with Convergence Journalism: Cross-Media as a Theoretical and Analytical Concept’ in Convergence journal (2011 17:216) quoted Fagerjord and said “convergence often goes hand in hand with divergence”.

In the same article, Erdal also wrote: “Fagerjord and Storsul (2007:20) distinguish between six forms of media convergence: convergence of networks, terminals, services, rhetorics, markets and regulatory regimes.”

Convergence in action – own observatations and others’:

Simone Murray in her article “Media Convergence’s Third Wave: Content Streaming” in Convergence (2008 9, p. 8) quoted Michael Wolf (2000, p. 92) as writing:

“Movies, pieces of music, books, or newspapers can all be expressed in the same binary code. Discret forms of analogue media are just different dialects of the language of computerese. Content is becoming a very liquid asset. To take Marshall McLuhan’s famed dictum a step further: The message is now independent of the medium.”

Example – media companies putting their TV, radio, text archives online.
Murray talks about the shift from ‘one-off’ information to ‘recyclable content’. Commercial reason – “Motivating the dissociation of content from the restrictions of specific media formats is the urge to amortise ever-higher production costs by establishing multiple revenue streams from major media franchises.”

- First wave – “Increasing concentration of ownership of mainstream media properties” – merger and acquisitions
- Second wave – “Convergence around common digital operating systems” with content becoming “industrial organising principles – the importance of brands.

TV used to be the one and only screen in the home

The blurring and dissappearing of boundaries between media and between media stake holders, old and new.

Before the internet and digitization

TVs – one to many broadcast using images, moving images and sound.
Radio – one to many broadcast using sound only.
Newspapers, magazines and books – publications in printed words and images.

Now

TVs – can function as radios with digital stations, can be broadcast online as well as by traditional and digital way and watched on TV, online via PC or mobile phones.
Radio – using limited texts in digital transmission, can be broadcast online, on digital along with on FM, AM and to some extent short wave. Reception can be via radio, mobile, pc, MP3 devices.
Newspapers, magazines and books – possible use of audio and video in CD or DVD forms to create audio books. Can be read in printed forms or digitally via mobile phones or e-readers like Kindle or iPad.

New devices – PCs, smart phones, tablets functioning as a camera, radio, TV, navigator, recorder, bar code scanner, clock, calculator, organiser, document reader, game console…

Boundaries between TV, radio, newspapers are now blurring for net users.

Media stakeholders – role convergence

Broadcasters
Journalists
Content producers – now also users of Twitter, Facebook, YouTube content created by the public.

Viewers
Listeners
Readers
Users

Many are now also…

Produsers/
Bloggers
Twitters
Facebookers
YouTubers

Convergence worldwide on deregulations, values (capitalism, individualism), language usages (English, HTML)…

Content – more diverse, more abundant, requiring curating

Time – produsers have more control with recording and watch again.

Size – gadgets getting smaller, companies getting bigger and operating on many platforms.

Infrastructure – Muhammad I. Ayish’s examples from United Arab Emirates, the richest and most wired in the Arab world (Convergence, 2003 9, p. 77).

- Dubai Media City, which was launched in 2000, provides a platform for a wide range of communication activities from broadcasting to publishing, multimedia, post-production to webcasting for companies such as CNN, CNBC, BBC… Ayish calls this ‘technological convergence’.

- Emirates Cable Television and Multimedia or E-Vision, also launched in 2000, provides digital cable television and multimedia services such as pay-per-view, interactive quizzes, home shopping, online games…to residents of UAE.

Commercial interest

Yu Shi, an assistant professor from Penn State University at Harrisburg noted: “With digitalized information, information communication technology corporations and tradtional media conglomerates in developed countries seek to harness a variety of information platforms and reach different audience segments”.

He quoted Arsenault & Castells (2008) talking about “horizontal integration” in the United States with News Corp investing in MySpace, Apple running an online video store, the iTunes, and Google acquiring YouTube. (“iPhones in China: The Contradictory Stories of Media-ICT Globalisation in the Era of Media Convergence and Corporate Strategy”, Journal of Communication Inquiry 2011 35, p.134 originally published online 28 March 2011.

Nightingale gave the example of ITV taking over Friends United that had millions of members and a lot of user-generated content. (Nightingale, 2007, p. 25).

Castells also saw companies “mixing vertical and horizontal communication mode” when “distributing content using interactive networks” and “interact with their audience”.

He said “There is a process of convergence that gives birth to a new media reality whose contours and effects will ultimately decided by political and business struggles, as the owners of communication networks position themselves to control access and traffic in favour of their business partners and preferred customers.” (The Rise of the Network Society, 2010.)

Intelligence – getting smarter. From pagers to smart phones.

Jenkins (2006) provided a number of examples of media convergence.

He wrote: “The Matrix is entertainment for the age of media convergence, integrating multiple texts to create a narrative so large that it can not be contained within a single medium (page 97).”

Jenkins explained further what he called “transmedia story telling”: “In the ideal form of transmedia storytelling, each medium does what it does best – so that a story might be introduced in a film, expanded through television, novels, and comics; its world might be explored through game play or experienced as an amusement park attraction (page 98).”

Jenkins also consider Survivor (2000) and American Idol (2002) as “the first killer application of media convergence” with the audience’s “asynchronous participation” through telephone calls and text messages.

Attention. Divergence? There used to be only one screen in the home, now many. One can play on an iPhone, one on an iPad, one is on Niteendo Wii, one reading on Kindle and one watching TV…

Henry Jenkins – Convergence? I Diverge.