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.

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.

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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.

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.

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

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.

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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.”

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.