Global Media Convergence And Cultural Transformation

"This book aims to engage the complex relationship between technology, culture, and socio-economic elements by exploring it in a transnational, yet contextually grounded, framework, exploring diverse perspectives and approaches, from political economy to cultural studies, and from policy studies to ethnography"--Provided by publisher.

"This book aims to engage the complex relationship between technology, culture, and socio-economic elements by exploring it in a transnational, yet contextually grounded, framework, exploring diverse perspectives and approaches, from political economy to cultural studies, and from policy studies to ethnography"--Provided by publisher.

This edited volume explores different meanings of media convergence and deconvergence, and reconsiders them in critical and innovative ways. Its parts provide together a broad picture of opposing trends and tensions in media convergence, by underlining the relevance of this powerful idea and emphasizing the misconceptions that it has generated. Sergio Sparviero, Corinna Peil, Gabriele Balbi and the other authors look into practices and realities of users in convergent media environments, ambiguities in the production and distribution of content, changes to the organization of media industries, the re-configuration of media markets, and the influence of policy and regulations. Primarily addressed to scholars and students in different fields of media and communication studies, Media Convergence and Deconvergence deconstructs taken-for-granted concepts and provides alternative and fresh analyses on one of the most popular topics in contemporary media culture. Chapter 1 is available open access under a CC BY 4.0 license at link.springer.com

The contributors show that digital media are disrupting entire media industries, but without erasing the past and insist that one media sector is not the same as the next. As the title signals even in the age of convergence and remix culture, different media continue to display their own distinctive political economies.

“What the future fortunes of [Gramsci’s] writings will be, we cannot know. However, his permanence is already sufficiently sure, and justifies the historical study of his international reception. The present collection of studies is an indispensable foundation for this.” —Eric Hobsbawm, from the preface Antonio Gramsci is a giant of Marxian thought and one of the world's greatest cultural critics. Antonio A. Santucci is perhaps the world's preeminent Gramsci scholar. Monthly Review Press is proud to publish, for the first time in English, Santucci’s masterful intellectual biography of the great Sardinian scholar and revolutionary. Gramscian terms such as “civil society” and “hegemony” are much used in everyday political discourse. Santucci warns us, however, that these words have been appropriated by both radicals and conservatives for contemporary and often self-serving ends that often have nothing to do with Gramsci’s purposes in developing them. Rather what we must do, and what Santucci illustrates time and again in his dissection of Gramsci’s writings, is absorb Gramsci’s methods. These can be summed up as the suspicion of “grand explanatory schemes,” the unity of theory and practice, and a focus on the details of everyday life. With respect to the last of these, Joseph Buttigieg says in his Nota: “Gramsci did not set out to explain historical reality armed with some full-fledged concept, such as hegemony; rather, he examined the minutiae of concrete social, economic, cultural, and political relations as they are lived in by individuals in their specific historical circumstances and, gradually, he acquired an increasingly complex understanding of how hegemony operates in many diverse ways and under many aspects within the capillaries of society.” The rigor of Santucci’s examination of Gramsci’s life and work matches that of the seminal thought of the master himself. Readers will be enlightened and inspired by every page.

"With Media Convergence, Tim Dwyer has given us a bold restatement of the political economy approach for a 21st century media environment where traditional industry silos are collapsing, and where media users are increasingly engaged with the production and distribution of media and not simply its consumption. The book displays considerable attention to institutional detail and comparative analysis, and is well designed to provide a road map of current and future trends for policy makers and media activists, as well as students and future workers in the convergent media space." Professor Terry Flew, Creative Industries Faculty, Queensland University of Technology, Australia How will people access digital media content in the future? What combination of TV, computer or mobile device will be employed? Which kinds of content will become commonplace? Rapid changes in technology and the media industries have led to new modes of distributing and consuming information and entertainment across platforms and devices. It is now possible for newspapers to deliver breaking news by email alerts or RSS feeds, and for audiovisual content to be read, listened to or watched at a convenient time, often while on the move. This process of 'media convergence', in which new technologies are accommodated by existing media industries, has broader implications for ownership, media practices and regulation. Dwyer critically analyses the political, economic, cultural, social, and technological factors that are shaping these changing media practices. There are examples of media convergence in everyday life throughout, including IPTV, VoIP and Broadband networks. The impacts of major traditional media players moving into the online space is illustrated using case studies such as the acquisition of the social networking site MySpace by News Corporation, and copyright issues on Google's YouTube. This informative resource is key reading for media studies students, researchers, and anyone with an interest in media industries, policy and regulation.

Convergence has become a buzzword, referring on the one hand to the integration between computers, television, and mobile devices or between print, broadcast, and online media and on the other hand, the ownership of multiple content or distribution channels in media and communications. Yet while convergence among communications companies has been the major trend in the neoliberal era, the splintering of companies, de-convergence, is now gaining momentum in the communications market. As the first comprehensive attempt to analyze the wave of de-convergence of the global media system in the context of globalization, this book makes sense of those transitions by looking at global trends and how global media firms have changed and developed their business paradigm from convergence to de-convergence. Jin traces the complex relationship between media industries, culture, and globalization by exploring it in a transitional yet contextually grounded framework, employing a political economic analysis integrating empirical data analysis.

This volume offers a timely examination of technology's impact on media companies and the results of convergence among media industries, considering the effects on journalistic, business, and economic practices. Media Organizations and Convergence: Case Studies of Media Convergence Pioneers considers the many definitions of convergence and explores the changes in communication technologies. Author Gracie L. Lawson-Borders provides a brief history of media segments and their evolutions as they adapt to emerging technologies, media conglomeration, and the competitive and global changes that have occurred in the industry. She also examines the theoretical implications of technology and convergence in the operations and practices of media organizations. The case studies included here profile three media convergence pioneers--Tribune Company in Chicago, Media General in Richmond, and Belo Corporation in Dallas--that have incorporated convergence into their journalistic practices. Lawson-Borders considers the social, cultural, and political implications of convergence, and presents issues and concerns for the future of convergence in the media industry. As a snapshot of media convergence at the current stage in its evolution, this book offers important insights into the business of media at a time of dramatic change. It will be a valuable resource for scholars and students in media management, mass media, and related areas of the media industry.