Reflection 3: New Media, Media Convergence

Reflection 3: New Media, Media Convergence

I.

New Media

New media is often characterized as highly interactive digital technology. New media is “very easily processed, stored, transformed, retrieved, hyper-linked and, perhaps most radical of all, easily searched for and accessed,” Robert Logan writes in his book Understanding New Media. Conceptually, new media can be viewed as a cultural process that reflects societal values and societal transformation. These and other considerations help define new media and explain its significance. New media is changing the way people across the world are entertained and consume information. The following five types of new media illustrate the evolution of new media.

Blogs

Although blogs are an early form of new media, they are still relevant and share several characteristics of the most recent new media types.

Information in blogs is easily accessed and searched for, and everything is typically organized naturally. For instance, blog posts are often nested under categories, and users can navigate posts by a specific category or tag or via a search. And like other forms of new media where content is posted — such as online newspapers and some social media platforms — entries often contain mixed media such as photos and video to go along with the text.

Blogs can also be interactive, despite some variance. For instance, the most popular type of news coverage for blogs is overwhelmingly politics and foreign events, according to the Pew Research Center. Yet despite political bloggers, “most journalists are seeking to remain gatekeepers even in this highly interactive and participatory format,” a study in Journalism found.

Virtual Reality

Virtual reality technologies simulate an environment along with the user’s physical presence and sensory experience. Commonly, the user experiences virtual reality through a special headset or on a computer screen.

Seemingly limitless applications for virtual reality exist. In virtual reality, users can cycle through the Himalayas, consider purchasing real estate that hasn’t been built yet, see a 360-degree film or train as a sniper. All virtual reality delivers a highly interactive, immersive experience that places the user in a lifelike or fictional environment. Some say that virtual reality’s unrivaled level of immersion qualifies it as the “ultimate medium” in new media, according to professors Özhan Tingöy and Barbaros Bostan.

Virtual reality may be poised to become the future of new media. Media and entertainment companies are investing in virtual reality and planning for it to become the next entertainment platform, The New York Times says. Virtual reality can change journalism and the way audiences view and engage with news from around the world, TechRepublic describes.

Social Media

Social media centers on creating, sharing and exchanging information, ideas and content in online networks and communities. Highly interactive, social media is a form of new media that relies heavily on the participation of users to provide value.

As opposed to forms of new media like virtual reality, social media is commonplace. The average online user spends 1.72 hours per day on social platforms, a survey of 170,000 Internet users by GlobalWebIndex found. Social networks consume about 28 percent of all online activity.

The future of social media is likely tied to other forms of new media. For instance, Inc. magazine sees technologies such as augmented and virtual reality, live video and the integration of photos and storytelling as part of social media’s short-term future.

Online Newspapers

Online newspapers are considered new media for many of the same reasons as blogs. Online newspapers blend multiple types of media and are easily accessed and searched. Users can also interact with some online newspapers via a comment feature.

Online newspapers — along with social media and other forms of new media — are a major part of why traditional newspapers are shifting to digital form. Only 56 percent of newspaper readership takes place exclusively in print, according to the Pew Research Center. Newspaper ad revenue from print dropped to $16.4 billion in 2014 from $44.9 billion in 2003, while digital ad revenue increased to $3.5 billion in 2014 from $1.2 billion in 2003.

Digital Games  

Digital games are a part of everyday media culture and a unique type of new media. “Digital games and game worlds open up cultural spaces themselves, and, unlike other new media and virtual environments, these spaces are framed as ‘playful’ from the outset,” Johannes Fromme and Alexander Unger write in the book Computer Games and New Media Cultures.

Digital games are also noteworthy for how they build interaction and community. “The industry is producing a steady stream of games that continue to expand their nature and impact — they can be artistic, social and collaborative, with many allowing massive numbers of people from all over the world to participate simultaneously,” The New Media Consortium’s 2014 K–12 Horizon Report says. More than half of the most frequent gamers play with others, and around half feel that video games help them connect with friends and spend time with family, according to the Entertainment Software Association.

Certain types of games demonstrate the possibilities of new media. Massively multiplayer online role-playing games immerse gamers in virtual worlds that are built upon social interaction — and these “artificial worlds have their own structure, culture, ethos, economy and politics,” Tingöy and Bostan write. Another example is how live video game streaming services are rising in popularity. This trend has led to a legitimate new sport called “e-sports,” or video games as professional spectator sports, The Economist reports.

  

II.

Media Convergence 

Media convergence is a term that can refer to either: 1) the merging of previously distinct media technologies and media forms resulting from digitization and computer networking; or 2) an economic strategy in which the media properties owned by communications companies employ digitization and computer networking to work together (see ​Media Ownership).

Media Convergence as Technological Convergence

For much of media history, it made sense to talk about various analog media forms — books, newspapers, radio, television, cinema — as distinct technologies belonging to separate industries. However, the combination of digitization and computer networking has resulted in the breaking down of these traditional media silos and the integration of all media, enabling the immediate and global exchange of every kind of content.

This technological convergence simplifies the production of media content while also greatly expanding, accelerating and facilitating its distribution, often with associated cost savings. A digital photograph, for example, can be shot and circulated globally within seconds via the Internet, eliminating the need for film processing, printing and physical distribution. Similarly, consumers can access multiple forms of media content — books, radio and television programs, music, movies, newspapers — on their computers, smart phones or other devices at a time and place of their choosing, often for free. With technological convergence, the electronic transmission of data, which can be exponential, replaces the more singular, physical transportation of material goods.

Technological convergence has also lowered the barriers to entry for media production. Digitization allows consumers of media content to become producers and distributors of media content as well, whether they are hobbyists frequenting social media sites or professionals (e.g., designers, filmmakers, musicians, writers, etc.) seeking to establish themselves. Some analysts see this as a democratization of media; anyone with access to digital media and a computer network can produce, consume and circulate media content.

Our experience with convergence to date, however, has also revealed some drawbacks. Not everyone has ready and affordable access to digital media, or the skills to employ them, creating a digital divide between information haves and have-nots in a society where connectivity to computer networks (and the literacy required to navigate them) is increasingly important. Also, the ubiquity of digital media and the tracking capacity of computer programs have resulted in increased surveillance, prompting concerns about personal privacy.

Furthermore, the rapid change of digital formats, the dynamism of digital content and the massive quantity of data lead to concerns about the storage, preservation and protection of communications and cultural materials deemed important to the public record. The ease with which digital content can be copied, manipulated and redistributed presents a challenge to existing copyright law and complicates any attempts to prevent the pirating of intellectual content, as the music, film and television industries have discovered. The free circulation of media content has also posed a serious threat to the economic viability of traditional media industries, such as book and newspaper publishing.

Media Convergence as Corporate Convergence

This strategy is a product of three elements: 1) digitization; 2) corporate concentration, whereby fewer large companies own more media properties; and 3) government deregulation, which has increasingly allowed media conglomerates to own different kinds of media (e.g., television and radio stations, and newspapers) in the same markets, and which has permitted content carriage companies (e.g., cable and satellite TV distributors) to own content producers (e.g., specialty TV channels).

Corporate convergence allows companies to reduce labour, administrative and material costs, to use the same media content across several media outlets, to provide advertisers with package deals for a number of media platforms, and to increase brand recognition and brand loyalty among audiences through cross-promotion and cross-selling. At the same time, it raises significantly the economic barriers to newcomers seeking to enter media markets, thus limiting competition for converged companies. Historically, communications companies have formed newspaper chains and networks of radio and TV stations to realize many of these same advantages, and convergence can be seen as the expansion and intensification of this same logic.

In Canada, Quebecor has become the champion of media convergence, hoping to benefit from the cross-purposing and cross-promotion of the content it produces and distributes. Quebecor is active in newspaper, magazine and book publishing, television production and cable distribution, cable and wireless telephony, internet services, music and video distribution and retailing, and video game development. Bell Canada Enterprises (BCE), through its media subsidiaries Bell and Bell Media, is involved in conventional and mobile telephony, television production and distribution, internet services, radio and outdoor advertising. Rogers is Canada's largest wireless telephone carrier, and has interests in internet service provision, television production and distribution, radio and magazine publishing. The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) has also changed its profile from a radio and television broadcaster to a converged, multi-platform media organization with web services, and mobile news and music applications. The CBC radio program Q, for example, is televised on CBC television and has its own web site and YouTube channel.

While corporate convergence can be beneficial to companies, there are potential undesirable consequences, including: a reduction in competition; increased barriers to entry for new companies; the further commercialization of the media; and the treatment of audiences as consumers rather than citizens. The substantial costs of corporate mergers have also led converged companies to seek profits through cost-cutting rather than increased investment in communication services.

Corporate convergence also prompts concerns about the quality of corporate journalism, such as: the role of the media in democratic societies to provide objective information and analysis to an informed citizenry; the independence of journalists; the range of voices and diversity of viewpoints on current events; coverage of local issues; and conflicts of interest between properties owned by the same company.

Media Convergence

New Media

Sources:

http://online.seu.edu/new-media/

https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/media-convergence/