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2017 | Book

Media Convergence Meets Deconvergence Read chapter Read first chapter

Media Convergence and Deconvergence

Editors: Prof. Dr. Sergio Sparviero, Dr. Corinna Peil, Prof. Dr. Gabriele Balbi

Publisher: Springer International Publishing

Book Series : Global Transformations in Media and Communication Research - A Palgrave and IAMCR Series

Part of: Springer Professional "Wirtschaft+Technik" , Springer Professional "Wirtschaft" , Springer Professional "Technik"

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About this book

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

Table of Contents

Frontmatter

Introduction

Frontmatter

Open Access

Chapter 1. Media Convergence Meets Deconvergence
Abstract
This introductory chapter explains that there is a widely shared understanding of the imperative nature of media convergence, which is based on different notions connecting positive goals such as efficiency, synergy, simplification, information abundance, participation, availability and multimodality. These social imaginaries of media convergence are powerful concepts that influence political agendas and legitimize policy decisions. In this book, these privileged meanings of media convergence are challenged by presenting alternative and mostly overlooked trends and theories defined under the umbrella term of media deconvergence. The perspective of deconvergence helps to shed light on sites of tension and the simultaneity of competing forces such as coalescence and drifting apart, or linearity and discontinuity. Two of these sites of tension are analyzed more carefully in this chapter: the user’s perspective and the (de)convergence of markets.
Corinna Peil, Sergio Sparviero
PDF View full text
Chapter 2. Deconstructing “Media Convergence”: A Cultural History of the Buzzword, 1980s–2010s
Abstract
This chapter aims to deconstruct, mainly through a revision of scientific literature, the historical meanings of the term “media convergence” from the 1980s to the early 2010s. During these decades, media convergence has become more and more a popular buzzword in media studies and has been surrounded by the emergence of four different discourses and narratives. A technological narrative has focused on the coming together of different technical devices up to the so-called überbox. An economic/market dimension has been symbolized by mergers and acquisitions among private companies in different sectors. A political/regulatory media convergence has become a common policy in different countries and institutions, willing to favor and, at the same time, to respond to market convergence. Finally, a cultural perspective has seen new users’ practices and new production and distribution of content as the key phenomena in media convergence.
Gabriele Balbi

Media Audiences and Usage

Frontmatter
Chapter 3. Convergence in Domestic Media Use? The Interplay of Old and New Media at Home
Abstract
The chapter discusses convergent and deconvergent media use against the background of everyday life and the domestic sphere. Referring to a qualitative panel study on the usage of old and new media, it shows to which extent radio or TV programs and newspaper articles are used online via the internet in average German households. The findings are based on ethnographically oriented household studies with 25 heterosexual couples who were living together in the same household. Asking whether domestic media use is transforming to a predominantly online-based practice, this chapter demonstrates that, so far, an extreme shift in media usage cannot be observed. Instead, both old and new media coexist.
Kathrin Friederike Müller, Jutta Röser
Chapter 4. Blurred Lines, Distinct Forces: The Evolving Practices of Italian TV Audiences in a Convergent Scenario
Abstract
This chapter builds on the final results of a several-years-long qualitative research on Italian convergent television, mainly focusing on the different professional and cultural approaches to television and media convergence and on the changes in television viewers’ consumption habits and practices, following or reacting to broadcasters’ production strategies. An original “pyramid” model of “weak” and “strong” audience engagement is presented, to represent effectively the relationships between television shows and their audiences and the different possible practices. The model is also particularly effective in explaining the more recent trends inside the Italian scenario. These changes in viewing practices and in the interplay between broadcasters and audiences have been divided into four categories to offer a fluid and unstable yet accurate portrait of television convergent consumption.
Luca Barra, Massimo Scaglioni
Chapter 5. Media Convergence and the Network Society: Media Logic(s), Polymedia and the Transition of the Public Sphere
Abstract
In this chapter it is argued that the phenomena which used to be described as convergence have started to reach a level of complexity which can no longer be embraced by the convergence concepts alone. For one, convergence as a term implies a transition process, which for many new social media platforms does not seem to be applicable anymore: they are already polymediated by nature. Consequently, the chapter links the idea of media convergence to a concept, which specifically focuses on the role of technology and its embeddedness in interpersonal and institutional contexts: the concept of “media logic.” To offer an applicable approach for media logic, which opens up the field for empirical research, the concept of “media grammar” is introduced. To demonstrate how media logic and the connected concept of media grammar play out in society, the notion of the digital public sphere is discussed.
Caja Thimm
Chapter 6. Deconstructing Audiences in Converging Media Environments
Abstract
The way audiences have been conceptualized is challenged by the process of convergence. Starting with a look back to the characteristics of audience measurement, the chapter proposes two approaches that can help to meet these challenges. First it is argued that today’s media environments require a repertoire-oriented research perspective, which investigates how media users combine different kinds of media and different kinds of content and create their personal repertoire. Second, against the background of the eroding link between certain media devices and the respective user practices, the concept of communication modes is introduced; this refers to the user’s definition of what he or she is actually doing with the media. Both approaches are illustrated by recent empirical studies.
Uwe Hasebrink, Sascha Hölig

Production and Distribution of Media Content

Frontmatter
Chapter 7. Convergent Media Quality? Comparing the Content of Online and Offline Media in Switzerland
Abstract
This chapter examines the effects of the convergence of the online and offline news offerings in the digital age on the diversity of the media market, its financial resources and journalistic quality in Switzerland. Under the influence of the euphoria surrounding the internet, many authors have stressed the advantages of online journalism over its conventional counterpart. The empirical findings show that this does not hold for Switzerland yet. Indeed, the convergence of the media in the digital age appears to have particularly negative consequences with regard to the financing capability and contents quality of the news media and to the diversity of the digital news offer. The digital news market is characterized by a few providers with wide reach. Purely digital brands are still very rare.
Mark Eisenegger, Mario Schranz, Angelo Gisler
Chapter 8. Transmedia Storytelling and Mega-Narration: Audiovisual Production in Converged Media Environments
Abstract
Technological change leads to a multiplicity of channels and platforms which deliver audiovisual content. The fragmentation of film and television leads also to fragmented audiences. Diverse audiences use different media platforms to get films and television shows whenever and wherever they want. The chapter deals with two parts of the consequences of digitization in converged media environments: first, the level of cultural developments in textual production, namely transmedia storytelling as an industrial practice to engage audiences with television drama series as multi-layered media texts driven by technological and economic changes, and second, mega-narration as an industrial practice to engage audiences with a story universe as global brand. The article argues that transmedia storytelling is a consequence of media convergence and deconvergence in multi-platform media environments.
Lothar Mikos
Chapter 9. Web 2.0: An Argument Against Convergence
Abstract
This chapter, first published in First Monday in 2008 and presented here with a new introduction, argues that Web 2.0 can be best understood as a key intervention, from within the dot.com/new-media business sector, recovering from the crash, that reasserts the equal legitimacy of the use of networked computing, over high-speed lines, for computing-oriented activities, and not just video on demand and voice over IP. Web 2.0 provides evidence that, while there is a convergence of all forms of media and communications towards similar data traffic over the internet, there remain diverging views over the nature, control and use of the internet, views that express the degree to which corporate players imagine themselves to be “media”, “telephony” or “computing” in primary orientation.
Matthew Allen

Regulation and Media Markets

Frontmatter
Chapter 10. The Deconverging Convergence of the Global Communication Industries in the Twenty-First Century
Abstract
The global communication industries have undergone a structural transformation in the early twenty-first century. This chapter discusses the recent trend of media deconvergence and it documents this dramatic change in the global communication industries. It investigates the ways in which global media corporations have changed and developed the business paradigm and its implications in the global media markets. The major characteristics of media deconvergence, which has become a new trend in the media industries, are then mapped out. This contextualization of the recent developments of media deconvergence is expected to shed light on the debates on the fall of media convergence and the emergence of media deconvergence as a new business model.
Dal Yong Jin
Chapter 11. Deconstructing the Music Industry Ecosystem
Abstract
The core preoccupation of this chapter is to critique and explain the form and nature of relationship between technological convergence and market convergence as it has evolved in the context of the music industry’s ongoing transition to a digital milieu. This chapter examines the unfolding relationships between the core music industry subsectors (recording, publishing, live) and the network of ancillary services surrounding this core. It points to a fundamental reconfiguring of the music industry’s structure and organization per se, materializing a fresh range of opportunities and potential revenue streams. Ultimately, the chapter interrogates the changing nature of the relationships between the music industry’s key subsectors and music’s increasingly dense and complex relations with other media sectors, hence emphasizing the continued relevance of vertical and horizontal integration as key frames for understanding music industry dynamics.
Jim Rogers
Chapter 12. Is Convergence the “Killer Bug” in the Media Ecosystem? The Case of Flemish Media Policymaking 2010–2015
Abstract
This contribution analyzes how the government, regulatory agencies and stakeholders in the media system of the Dutch-speaking part of Belgium employ the “convergence argument” to formulate claims in policymaking processes. To this end, the chapter analyzes three key moments in media restructuring in Flanders between 2010 and 2015: the merger of printing activities of the multimedia groups Corelio and Concentra, the struggle between Flemish broadcasters and operators, and policy discussions regarding the 2016–2020 management contract between public service media VRT and the Flemish government. The Flemish case is indicative of the wider discursive use of the convergence buzzword that helps to push an economic agenda and furthers media policies that are reflective of controlled liberalization, favoring local interests.
Hilde Van den Bulck
Chapter 13. Connected TV: Conceptualizing the Fit Between Convergence and Organizational Strategy Within a Contingency Theory Framework: The Case of Germany
Abstract
This chapter investigates whether contingency theory (CT) serves as a valid theoretical framework in order to test its applicability for explaining current processes of the television broadcasting industry’s convergence towards connected TV. Following CT, it assumes that an organization’s environment creates challenges or contingencies that managers need to address in part by adopting appropriate strategies. When managers find themselves in a situation that does not match these contingencies, their organization’s performance suffers, and they endeavor to change its structures to one with a better fit, in order to improve performance. The author finds that CT can fruitfully be applied to various questions surrounding the fundamental transformation of television broadcasting convergence. This argument is supported by evidencing the emerging “ecosystem” for connected TV services in Germany.
Paul Clemens Murschetz
Chapter 14. Regulatory (de) Convergence: Localism, Federalism, and Nationalism in American Telecommunications Policy
Abstract
This chapter discusses how the issue of statewide cable franchising in the United States reintroduced us to two actors in communication policymaking that have long been dormant: local municipalities and state legislatures. Moreover, it exemplifies both convergence and deconvergence in American telecommunications policy. Convergence occurred through the 1996 Telecommunications Act that allowed multi-modal competition in cable, telephony, and internet. Deconvergence occurred with the emergence of new policy actors. Separately, neither regulatory convergence nor deconvergence are problematic. Their concurrence, however, has led to a state of what critical political economists call “regulatory capture” and “policy failure.” As a result, the public interest is often left unprotected while the various legislative and regulatory bodies vie for jurisdictional authority over cable television.
Christopher Ali
Chapter 15. The Triple-Network Convergence in China: Implementation and Challenges
Abstract
The year 2015 was the final one for the realization of the Triple-Network Convergence, a five-year plan designed to integrate the broadcasting, telecom and internet networks, in order to allow companies to deliver, in addition to the more traditional services, IPTV and mobile Television. However, despite the support from the central government and the potential for economic benefits, a proper regulatory framework could not be established because of conflicts between different institutions. This chapter aims to give a general account of the current progress of this plan, the stake of authorities and industry at different levels in China, the challenges, and the causes of the plan’s failure, as well as predictions about future developments.
Fei Jiang, Kuo Huang, Yanran Sun
Backmatter
Metadata
Title
Media Convergence and Deconvergence
Editors
Prof. Dr. Sergio Sparviero
Dr. Corinna Peil
Prof. Dr. Gabriele Balbi
Copyright Year
2017
Electronic ISBN
978-3-319-51289-1
Print ISBN
978-3-319-51288-4
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-51289-1