Challenges for Convergence

Nightengale, Virginia. “New Media Worlds? Challenges for Convergence.” In Nightengale, Virginia and Tim Dwyer, Eds. New Media Worlds Challenges For Convergence. South Melbourne, VIC: Oxford University Press, 2007, 19 – 36.

Media convergence is a concept that implies a constantly evolving aspect of technology and media use. There is a wide array of media content available to users and consumers, many of which, in the past, have been unique to separate technologies. Nowadays, with the introduction and integration of media technologies such as computers, laptops, and evolutions of the mobile phone (most recently notable, the iPhone), many of this media content can be readily available, having been ‘converged’ into central technologies that have many capabilities. Within the reading, once this concept is established, Nightengale explore the idea that media convergence can impact certain media industries, e.g. the advertising industry, where the focus on mass communication and advertising has been disrupted by the convergence of media on the internet, where personalization of advertising is far more attractive to the consumer.
Convergence can be seen in almost all media technologies nowadays. It has become intrinsically related to the concept of dailiness (from week 3), where a variety of daily services can be provided by a single technology. As technologies are updated, they have far more capabilities. Gaming consoles can now aid in communication, and as explained in the lecture, ‘modding’ of Xbox consoles allow for the Xbox to provide more media content than simply games. Within my own experiences, I find that my media interactions revolve around two central technologies – my laptop (with internet) and my mobile phone. From either of these, I can communicate with people, be updated on the latest news, play games, and even watch television shows. An interesting point made by Nightengale was the connections that television industries have with parts of the internet, such as Nine Network’s affiliation with MSN. Media convergence on the internet has forced affiliations to be made across media technologies in order to remain relevant to the widest possible audience.
The use of internet in everyday life, and as a part of our digital culture today, is well established as extremely prominent, particularly amongst young people. My personal use of the internet fits in with this concept that media content no longer relies on separate technologies – MSN can provide instant communication over great distances, Wikipedia and Google searches can give vast amounts of information, and I can watch the shows that I want to when I want to without having to wait for it to broadcast on television. The question then remains, once everything has ‘converged,’ particularly within the internet, what evolution can then be made by media and technology?