Media
convergence
Media convergence, phenomenon involving the interconnection of information
and communications technologies, computer networks, and media content. It
brings together the “three C’s”—computing, communication,
and content—and is a direct consequence of the digitization of media content
and the popularization of the Internet.
Media convergence transforms established industries, services, and work
practices and enables entirely new forms of content to emerge. It erodes
long-established media industry and content “silos” and increasingly uncouples
content from particular devices, which in turn presents major challenges for
public policy and regulation. The five major elements of media convergence—the
technological, the industrial, the social, the textual, and the political—are
discussed below.
Media convergence
Technological Convergence
The technological dimension of convergence is the most readily understood.
With the World Wide Web, smartphones, tablet computers, smart televisions, and other digital devices,
billions of people are now able to access media content that was once tied to
specific communications media (print and broadcast) or platforms (newspapers, magazines, radio,
television, and cinema).
Since a diverse array of content is now being
accessed through the same devices, media organizations have developed
cross-media content. For example, news organizations no longer simply provide
just print or audiovisual content but are portals that make material available
in forms such as text, video, and podcasts, as well as providing links to other
relevant resources, online access to their archives, and opportunities for
users to comment on the story or provide links to relevant material.
These developments have transformed journalism by breaching longstanding boundaries—between
who is and is not a journalist (see citizen journalism), between deadlines and
other time, between journalists and editors, and between content platforms.
American journalism professor Jane Singer argued that in journalism today the
formerly once-closed newspaper story is now an open text, with
an ongoing existence.
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Industry Mergers
Such technological transformations have been met by industry convergence
and consolidation, as well as by the rise of giant new digital media players.
The 1990s and early 2000s saw large mergers, where the biggest media companies
sought to diversify their interests across media platforms. Among the largest
mergers were Viacom-Paramount (1994), Disney-ABC (1995), Viacom-CBS (2000), NBC-Universal (2004),
and the biggest merger in corporate history at the time, the 2000 merger
of America
On Line (AOL) and Time Warner. There were also takeovers of new media
start-up companies by the established media players, such as News Corporation’s
2005 takeover of Intermix Media Inc., the parent company of MySpace.
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In the late 1990s all these mergers made sense according to the logic
of synergies, in which cross-platform media
entities were greater than the sum of their component parts. However, after
the technology bubble burst in 2000 with
the NASDAQ crash, it became apparent that
cultural differences between merged entities were more difficult to overcome
than was first thought. For example, the AOL–Time Warner merger was a failure,
and by the time AOL was quietly spun off as a separate public company in 2009,
its value was a fraction of the estimated $350 billion the merged entity was
worth in 2001. Similarly, News Corporation sold off MySpace for $35
million in 2011, having paid $580 million to acquire it in 2005.
Social media is a new driver of the convergent media sector. The term social media refers to technologies, platforms,
and services that enable individuals to engage in communication from
one-to-one, one-to-many, and many-to-many. While the Internet has
always allowed individuals to participate in media not only as consumers but
also as producers, the social aspect of media convergence did not flourish
until the 2000s, with the rise of Web
2.0 sites that aimed to be user-focused, decentralized, and
able to change over time as users modified them through ongoing participation.
Social media is exemplified by the rise of online communication services
that include the social network Facebook,
the microblogging service Twitter,
the video-sharing Web site YouTube, blog software
such as Blogger and WordPress,
and many others. The scale of growth of these social media platforms has been
phenomenal. Facebook first became publicly available in 2006, and by 2012 it
had over one billion users. In 2012 it was estimated that over 72 hours of
video a minute were being uploaded onto YouTube, and over four billion videos a
day were being viewed from that site alone.
American media scholar Howard Rheingold has identified three
core characteristics of social media. First, social media make it possible for
everyone in the network to be simultaneously producer, distributor, and
consumer of content. “The asymmetrical relationship between broadcaster/media
producer and audience that characterized 20th century mass communications has
been radically changed,” says Rheingold. Second, social media’s power comes
from the connections between its users. Third, social media allows users to
coordinate activities between themselves “on scales and at speeds that were not
previously possible.”
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An important shift associated with convergence and social media is the rise
of user-created content, with users changing from
audiences to participants. Australian media scholar Axel Bruns referred to
the rise of the “produser,” or the Internet user who is both a user and a
creator of online content, while British author Charles Leadbeater
discussed the “pro-am revolution” and “mass collaboration,” where the tools of
content creation become cheaper and simpler to use, distinctions between
amateurs and experts become blurred, and media content production becomes
increasingly shared, social, and collaborative in nature. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development has
identified user-created content as a “significant disruptive force... [that]
creates both opportunities and challenges for established market participants
and their strategies,” since
Changes in the way users produce, distribute, access and re-use
information, knowledge and entertainment potentially give rise to increased
user autonomy, increased participation and
increased diversity.
Transmedia
Storytelling
One way that professional media has engaged with media convergence is
through transmedia storytelling, in which stories are told across multiple
platforms. Although it is intimately connected to brands and franchises being
spread across media by corporate conglomerates (e.g., Star Wars, The Matrix, Harry Potter, various Disney franchises), it does not
simply refer to the adaptation of content from one
platform to another (e.g., films and film characters providing the basis for
toys and games).
Rather, as Spanish media scholar Carlos Scolari has observed,
transmedia storytelling “is a particular narrative structure that expands
through both different languages (verbal, iconic, etc.) and media (cinema, comics,
television, video games, etc.).” While transmedia storytelling can be a source
of brand extension for media corporations, and hence further revenues and
profits from reaching new audiences and selling more products, it has also
functioned as a form of fan engagement with particular media content as they
put together a richer and more complex narrative around it.
Although transmedia storytelling predated the Internet, media convergence
has greatly extended its possibilities. For example, the British television
series Doctor Who had been the subject of various
loose, but “unofficial,” forms of brand extension (comics, novels, records) as
early as the 1960s, and fans had long engaged one another in producing
“fictional worlds” around the television show. By 2005 the arrival of media
convergence meant that when the British Broadcasting Corporation
recommissioned Doctor Who after 16 years off
the air, the new series had an explicitly transmedia format, with such material
as specially produced short online episodes, Web sites set within the Doctor Who world, and podcast commentaries on the
televised episodes. However, there has not yet been a media franchise that has
become totally transmedia-oriented; all have had a primary source for the
narrative, such as a film, television show, or book.
Media Convergence Policy
Media convergence has also thrown up new challenges for policy. For most of
the 20th century, media content was delivered through particular platforms,
such as books, newspapers, magazines, radio, television, cinema, and video
games. These different media were subject to different levels of regulation
based upon whether they were distributed in public or consumed in private,
whether children could access the content, whether a particular medium may have
more impact on its audience, and so on.
In the 21st century the content and platforms have separated, with content
now accessible in digital form across multiple devices. Moreover, as noted
above, users themselves are not just the consumers of content but increasingly
its producers and distributors. The environment in which media policy and
regulation are undertaken has been radically shifting as users more easily
control their own media environments and younger users
(“digital natives”) are often most familiar with convergent media technologies.
The nature of media companies has also changed. For example, the computer
company Apple, Inc., has become by far the world’s largest distributor of
music. The search-engine firm Google, Inc., plays a key role in making both
news and TV content available to global audiences. How to achieve
long-established principles of media policy, such as ensuring diversity of ownership and content,
regulating access on the basis of community standards, and meeting local
content requirements in an age of global media, is a major challenge for policy
makers in the age of media convergence.
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