Understanding Media Convergence
It’s important to keep in mind that the implementation of new technologies doesn’t mean that the old ones simply vanish into dusty museums. Today’s media consumers still watch television, listen to radio, read newspapers, and become immersed in movies. The difference is that it’s now possible to do all those things through one device — be it a personal computer or a smartphone — and through the Internet. Such actions are enabled by media convergence, the process by which previously distinct technologies come to share tasks and resources.
But media convergence isn’t just limited to technology. Media theorist Henry Jenkins argues that convergence isn’t an end result, but instead a process that changes how media is both consumed and produced. Jenkins breaks convergence down into five categories:
Economic convergence
Economic convergence occurs when a company controls several products or services within the same industry. For example, in the entertainment industry a single company may have interests across many kinds of media. For example, Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation is involved in book publishing (HarperCollins), newspapers (New York Post, The Wall Street Journal), broadcast television (Fox), cable television (FX, National Geographic Channel), internet (MySpace), and many other media.
Organic convergence
Organic convergence is what happens when someone is watching a television show online while exchanging text messages with a friend and also listening to music in the background — the “natural” outcome of a diverse media world.
Jenkins’s concept of organic convergence is perhaps the most telling. To many people, especially those who grew up in a world dominated by so-called old media, there is nothing organic about today’s media-dominated world. As a New York Times editorial opined, “Few objects on the planet are farther removed from nature than a glass and stainless steel smartphone.” But today’s high school students have never known a world where the Internet didn’t exist. Such a cultural sea change causes a significant generation gap between those who grew up with new media and those who didn’t.(https://www.daowen.com)
Cultural convergence
Cultural convergence has several aspects. Stories flowing across several kinds of media platforms is one component — for example, novels that become television series (True Blood); radio dramas that become comic strips (The Shadow); even amusement park rides that become film franchises (Pirates of the Caribbean). The character Harry Potter exists in books, films, toys, and amusement park rides. Another aspect of cultural convergence is participatory culture— that is, the way media consumers are able to annotate, comment on, remix, and otherwise influence culture in unprecedented ways. The video-sharing website YouTube is a prime example of participatory culture. YouTube gives anyone with a video camera and an Internet connection the opportunity to communicate with people around the world and create and shape cultural trends.
Global convergence
Global convergence is the process of geographically distant cultures influencing one another despite the distance that physically separates them. Nigeria’s cinema industry, nicknamed Nollywood, takes its cues from India’s Bollywood, which is in turn inspired by Hollywood in the United States. Tom and Jerry cartoons are popular on Arab satellite television channels. Successful American horror movies The Ring and The Grudge are remakes of Japanese hits. The advantage of global convergence is access to a wealth of cultural influence; its downside, some critics posit, is the threat of cultural imperialism, defined by Herbert Schiller as the way developing countries are “attracted, pressured, forced, and sometimes bribed into shaping social institutions to correspond to, or even promote, the values and structures of the dominating centre of the system.” Cultural imperialism can be a formal policy or can happen more subtly, as with the spread of outside influence through television, movies, and other cultural projects.
Technological convergence
Technological convergence is the merging of technologies such as the ability to watch TV shows online on sites like Hulu or to play video games on mobile phones like the Apple iPhone. When more and more different kinds of media are transformed into digital content, as Jenkins notes, “we expand the potential relationships between them and enable them to flow across platforms.”
It’s still difficult to predict how media convergence and immersion are affecting culture, society, and individual brains. Whatever the ultimate cognitive, social, or technological results, convergence is changing the way we relate to media today.
Words & Expressions
convergence：融合
organic：有机的
annotate：注释
posit：假定
cognitive：认知