{"id":34,"date":"2017-05-16T19:46:08","date_gmt":"2017-05-16T19:46:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/courses.lumenlearning.com\/suny-hccc-massmedia\/chapter\/1-4-convergence\/"},"modified":"2017-05-16T19:46:08","modified_gmt":"2017-05-16T19:46:08","slug":"1-4-convergence","status":"publish","type":"chapter","link":"https:\/\/courses.lumenlearning.com\/suny-hccc-massmedia\/chapter\/1-4-convergence\/","title":{"raw":"1.4 Convergence","rendered":"1.4 Convergence"},"content":{"raw":"
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Learning Objectives<\/h3>\n
  1. Identify examples of convergence in contemporary life.<\/li>\n
  2. Name the five types of convergence identified by Henry Jenkins.<\/li>\n
  3. Recognize how convergence is affecting culture and society.<\/li>\n <\/ol><\/div>\n

    It\u2019s important to keep in mind that the implementation of new technologies doesn\u2019t mean that the old ones simply vanish into dusty museums. Today\u2019s media consumers still watch television, listen to radio, read newspapers, and become immersed in movies. The difference is that it\u2019s now possible to do all those things through one device\u2014be it a personal computer or a smartphone\u2014and through the Internet. Such actions are enabled by media convergence<\/a><\/span>, the process by which previously distinct technologies come to share tasks and resources. A cell phone that also takes pictures and video is an example of the convergence of digital photography, digital video, and cellular telephone technologies. An extreme, and currently nonexistent, example of technological convergence would be the so-called black box, which would combine all the functions of previously distinct technology and would be the device through which we\u2019d receive all our news, information, entertainment, and social interaction.<\/p>\n

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    Kinds of Convergence<\/h2>\n

    But convergence isn\u2019t just limited to technology. Media theorist Henry Jenkins argues that convergence isn\u2019t an end result (as is the hypothetical black box), but instead a process that changes how media is both consumed and produced. Jenkins breaks convergence down into five categories:<\/p>\n

    1. 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\u2019s News Corporation is involved in book publishing (HarperCollins), newspapers (New York Post<\/em>, The Wall Street Journal<\/em>), sports (Colorado Rockies), broadcast television (Fox), cable television (FX, National Geographic Channel), film (20th Century Fox), Internet (MySpace), and many other media.<\/li>\n
    2. 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\u2014the \u201cnatural\u201d outcome of a diverse media world.<\/li>\n
    3. Cultural convergence has several aspects. Stories flowing across several kinds of media platforms is one component\u2014for example, novels that become television series (True Blood<\/em>); radio dramas that become comic strips (The Shadow<\/em>); even amusement park rides that become film franchises (Pirates of the Caribbean<\/em>). The character Harry Potter exists in books, films, toys, and amusement park rides. Another aspect of cultural convergence is participatory culture<\/a><\/span>\u2014that 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.<\/li>\n
    4. Global convergence is the process of geographically distant cultures influencing one another despite the distance that physically separates them. Nigeria\u2019s cinema industry, nicknamed Nollywood, takes its cues from India\u2019s Bollywood, which is in turn inspired by Hollywood in the United States. Tom and Jerry<\/em> cartoons are popular on Arab satellite television channels. Successful American horror movies The Ring<\/em> and The Grudge<\/em> 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<\/a><\/span>, defined by Herbert Schiller as the way developing countries are \u201cattracted, 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 (White, 2001).\u201d 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.<\/li>\n
    5. 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, \u201cwe expand the potential relationships between them and enable them to flow across platforms (Jenkins, 2001).\u201d\n<\/li>\n <\/ol>
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      Figure 1.7<\/span> <\/p>\n \"1.4.0\"<\/a>

      Nigeria\u2019s Nollywood produces more films annually than any other country besides India.<\/p>

      Paul Keller - nigerian VCDs at kwakoe<\/a> - CC BY 2.0.<\/p>\n <\/div>\n <\/div><\/div>\n

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      Effects of Convergence<\/h2>\n

      Jenkins\u2019s 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\u2019s media-dominated world. As a New York Times<\/em> editorial recently opined, \u201cFew objects on the planet are farther removed from nature\u2014less, say, like a rock or an insect\u2014than a glass and stainless steel smartphone (New York Times, 2010).\u201d But modern American culture is plugged in as never before, and today\u2019s high school students have never known a world where the Internet didn\u2019t exist. Such a cultural sea change causes a significant generation gap between those who grew up with new media and those who didn\u2019t.<\/p>\n

      A 2010 study by the Kaiser Family Foundation found that Americans aged 8 to 18 spend more than 7.5 hours with electronic devices each day\u2014and, thanks to multitasking, they\u2019re able to pack an average of 11 hours of media content into that 7.5 hours (Lewin, 2010). These statistics highlight some of the aspects of the new digital model of media consumption: participation and multitasking. Today\u2019s teenagers aren\u2019t passively sitting in front of screens, quietly absorbing information. Instead, they are sending text messages to friends, linking news articles on Facebook, commenting on YouTube videos, writing reviews of television episodes to post online, and generally engaging with the culture they consume. Convergence has also made multitasking much easier, as many devices allow users to surf the Internet, listen to music, watch videos, play games, and reply to e-mails on the same machine.<\/p>\n

      However, it\u2019s still difficult to predict how media convergence and immersion are affecting culture, society, and individual brains. In his 2005 book Everything Bad Is Good for You<\/em>, Steven Johnson argues that today\u2019s television and video games are mentally stimulating, in that they pose a cognitive challenge and invite active engagement and problem solving. Poking fun at alarmists who see every new technology as making children stupider, Johnson jokingly cautions readers against the dangers of book reading: It \u201cchronically understimulates the senses\u201d and is \u201ctragically isolating.\u201d Even worse, books \u201cfollow a fixed linear path. You can\u2019t control their narratives in any fashion\u2014you simply sit back and have the story dictated to you\u2026. This risks instilling a general passivity in our children, making them feel as though they\u2019re powerless to change their circumstances. Reading is not an active, participatory process; it\u2019s a submissive one (Johnson, 2005).\u201d<\/p>\n

      A 2010 book by Nicholas Carr, The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains<\/em> is more pessimistic. Carr worries that the vast array of interlinked information available through the Internet is eroding attention spans and making contemporary minds distracted and less capable of deep, thoughtful engagement with complex ideas and arguments. \u201cOnce I was a scuba diver in a sea of words,\u201d Carr reflects ruefully. \u201cNow I zip along the surface like a guy on a Jet Ski (Carr, 2010).\u201d Carr cites neuroscience studies showing that when people try to do two things at once, they give less attention to each and perform the tasks less carefully. In other words, multitasking makes us do a greater number of things poorly. Whatever the ultimate cognitive, social, or technological results, convergence is changing the way we relate to media today.<\/p>\n

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      Video Killed the Radio Star: Convergence Kills Off Obsolete Technology\u2014or Does It?<\/h4>\n

      When was the last time you used a rotary phone? How about a street-side pay phone? Or a library\u2019s card catalog? When you need brief, factual information, when was the last time you reached for a volume of Encyclopedia Britannica<\/em>? Odds are it\u2019s been a while. All of these habits, formerly common parts of daily life, have been rendered essentially obsolete through the progression of convergence.<\/p>\n

      But convergence hasn\u2019t erased old technologies; instead, it may have just altered the way we use them. Take cassette tapes and Polaroid film, for example. Influential musician Thurston Moore of the band Sonic Youth recently claimed that he only listens to music on cassette. Polaroid Corporation, creators of the once-popular instant-film cameras, was driven out of business by digital photography in 2008, only to be revived 2 years later\u2014with pop star Lady Gaga as the brand\u2019s creative director. Several Apple iPhone apps allow users to apply effects to photos to make them look more like a Polaroid photo.<\/p>\n

      Cassettes, Polaroid cameras, and other seemingly obsolete technologies have been able to thrive\u2014albeit in niche markets\u2014both despite and because of Internet culture. Instead of being slick and digitized, cassette tapes and Polaroid photos are physical objects that are made more accessible and more human, according to enthusiasts, because of their flaws. \u201cI think there\u2019s a group of people\u2014fans and artists alike\u2014out there to whom music is more than just a file on your computer, more than just a folder of MP3s,\u201d says Brad Rose, founder of a Tulsa, Oklahoma-based cassette label (Hogan, 2010). The distinctive Polaroid look\u2014caused by uneven color saturation, underdevelopment or overdevelopment, or just daily atmospheric effects on the developing photograph\u2014is emphatically analog. In an age of high resolution, portable printers, and camera phones, the Polaroid\u2019s appeal to some has something to do with ideas of nostalgia and authenticity. Convergence has transformed who uses these media and for what purposes, but it hasn\u2019t eliminated these media.<\/p>\n <\/div>\n

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      Key Takeaways<\/h3>\n