Understanding Media Convergence

Repurposing print journalism for the Internet and beyond, convergent journalism invigorates and transforms how we create and experience media. The present book outlines and investigates the broad theoretical and conceptual issues surrounding this emergent subject.

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 development of digital media presents a unique opportunity to reconsider what communication is, and what individuals, groups, and societies might hope to accomplish through new as well as old media. At a time when digital media still provoke both utopian and dystopian views of their likely consequences, Klaus Bruhn Jensen places these ‘new’ media in a comparative perspective together with ‘old’ mass media and face-to-face communication, restating the two classic questions of media studies: what do media do to people, and what do people do with media? Media Convergence makes a distinction between three general types of media: the human body enabling communication in the flesh; the technically reproduced means of mass communication; and the digital technologies facilitating interaction one-to-one, one-to-many, as well as many-to-many. Features include: case studies, including mobile phones in everyday life, the Muhammad cartoons controversy and climate change as a global challenge for human communication and political action diagrams, figures, and tables summarizing key concepts beyond standard ‘models of communication’ systematic cross-referencing. Major terms are highlighted and cross-referenced throughout, with key concepts defined in margin notes.

When first published, Marshall McLuhan's Understanding Media made history with its radical view of the effects of electronic communications upon man and life in the twentieth century.

Convergence Media History explores the ways that digital convergence has radically changed the field of media history. Writing media history is no longer a matter of charting the historical development of an individual medium such as film or television. Instead, now that various media from blockbuster films to everyday computer use intersect regularly via convergence, scholars must find new ways to write media history across multiple media formats. This collection of eighteen new essays by leading media historians and scholars examines the issues today in writing media history and histories. Each essay addresses a single medium—including film, television, advertising, sound recording, new media, and more—and connects that specific medium’s history to larger issues for the field in writing multi-media or convergent histories. Among the volume’s topics are new media technologies and their impact on traditional approaches to media history; alternative accounts of film production and exhibition, with a special emphasis on film across multiple media platforms; the changing relationships between audiences, fans, and consumers within media culture; and the globalization of our media culture.

Understanding Media, Today. McLuhan in the Era of Convergence Culture

Media semiotics is a valuable method of focusing on the hidden meanings within media texts. This new edition brings Understanding Media Semiotics fully up to date and is written for students of the media, of linguistics and those interested in studying the ever-changing media in more detail. Offering an in-depth guide to help students investigate and understand the media using semiotic theory, this book assumes little previous knowledge of semiotics or linguistics, avoiding jargon and explaining the issues step by step. With in-depth case studies, practical accounts and directed further reading, Understanding Media Semiotics provides students with all the tools they need to understand semiotic analysis in the context of the media. Semiotic analysis is sometimes seen as complicated and difficult to understand; Marcel Danesi shows that on the contrary it can be readily understood and can greatly enrich students' understanding of media texts, from print media right through to the internet and apps.

The Media Convergence Handbook sheds new light on the complexity of media convergence and the related business challenges. Approaching the topic from a managerial, technological as well as end-consumer perspective, it acts as a reference book and educational resource in the field. Media convergence at business level may imply transforming business models and using multiplatform content production and distribution tools. However, it is shown that the implementation of convergence strategies can only succeed when expectations and aspirations of every actor involved are taken into account. Media consumers, content producers and managers face different challenges in the process of media convergence. Volume II of the Media Convergence Handbook tackles these challenges by discussing media business models, production, and users' experience and perspectives from a technological convergence viewpoint.