Media Convergence

Blogi i serwisy naukowe. Komunikacja naukowa w kulturze konwergencji

by Emanuel Kulczycki

Kulczycki, E. (2012). Blogi i serwisy naukowe. Komunikacja naukowa w kulturze konwergencji. W: I. Sójkowska (red.). Materiały konferencyjne EBIB nr 22. Toruń: Stowarzyszenie EBIB.

Rozwój środków komunikacji doprowadził do istotnych zmian w sposobie funkcjonowania nauki oraz informowania o wynikach... more Rozwój środków komunikacji doprowadził do istotnych zmian w sposobie funkcjonowania nauki oraz informowania o wynikach prac badawczych. W referacie zostanie podjęte zagadnienie blogosfery naukowej jako przykładu wykorzystania nowych mediów w procesie upowszechniania nauki. Komunikacja naukowa za pośrednictwem narzędzi internetowych zaczyna funkcjonować w paradygmacie kultury konwergencji, łącząc stare i nowe media w procesie dystrybucji wiedzy. Stare media nie tylko nie zostały wyparte, ale nadal są wykorzystywane i wspierane przez nowe technologie (rola mediów społecznościowych w procesie komunikacji naukowej zostanie omówiona na przykładzie serwisów Twitter, Facebook, Google Plus). Oprócz wskazania podstawowych elementów historycznych i typologicznych z zakresu funkcjonowania blogów naukowych, zostaną przedstawione i przedyskutowane funkcje, jakie blog może zaoferować: autorom-naukowcom, czytelnikom, społeczeństwu. Omówione zostaną przyczyny i motywacje stojące za rozpoczęciem blogowania oraz powody nie-blogowania o nauce (np. osobisty charakter blogu, a obiektywny charakter informacji naukowej). Autor podejmie próbę zarysowania panoramy polskiej blogosfery naukowej (przegląd projektów i inicjatyw) oraz opowie o blogowaniu z perspektywy naukowca na przykładzie swojego blogu Warsztat badacza komunikacji. Zaprezentuje blogi jako współczesne narzędzie komunikacji naukowej oraz przeanalizuje wyzwania i problemy mogące pojawić się podczas tworzenia serwisu naukowego skierowanego do szerokiego grona odbiorców (zarówno studentów, jak i pracowników naukowych). Na podstawie prac nad wortalem Nauka i Postęp tworzonym przez Politechnikę Poznańską, Telewizję Polską Oddział w Poznaniu oraz Urząd Marszałkowski Województwa Wielkopolskiego wskaże trudności, jakie wyłaniają się przy łączeniu starych i nowych mediów w procesie promocji i upowszechniania nauki. Analizy będą uwzględniały m.in. badania przeprowadzone przez TNS Pentor w ramach projektu, dzięki któremu powstał wortal Nauka i Postęp.

Beyond the ABC's Backyard

by Fiona Martin

The Labour of Media Use: The Two Active Audiences

by Göran Bolin

published in Information, Communication & Society, online first (April 2012)

The ‘active audience’ has theoretically been conceptualized from two perspectives: in political economy, it is... more The ‘active audience’ has theoretically been conceptualized from two perspectives: in political economy, it is suggested that television audiences work for the networks while watching and that they contribute to the valorization process with their labour. Although contested, it has survived among media scholars, also feeding into the discussion on web surveillance techniques. The other conceptualization comes from reception theory, media ethnography and cultural studies, where the interpretive work by audiences is seen as productive and resulting in identities, taste cultures and social difference. This article relates these perspectives by considering audiences as involved in two production–consumptions circuits: (1) the viewer activities produce social difference (identities and cultural meaning) in a social and cultural economy, which is then (2) made the object of productive consumption as part of the activities of the media industries, the end product being economic profit. This article argues for the relevance of analysing these as separate circuits, with different kinds of labour at their centre, and that recent debates on the active audience often misrecognize the difference.

Consumer Workers as Immaterial Labor in the Converging Media Markets: Three Value Creation Practices

by Johanna Moisander

co authored with Saara Könkkölä and Pikka-Maaria Laine; forthcoming in International Journal of Consumer Studies

This paper takes a practice-based approach to consumer studies and focuses on the strategic and productive roles that... more This paper takes a practice-based approach to consumer studies and focuses on the strategic and productive roles that consumers play as immaterial labor or consumer workers in the converging media markets. Based on a case study of a print media organization and its customers, the aim is to discuss the collaborative practices through which value is created in the market. By means of a textual analysis of online and interview data, three value-creation practices are abstracted and illustrated: constructing a sense of belonging and collective identity, mutual helping and peer support, and building pride and self-respect. Overall, the paper suggests that in global media environments, consumer-customers are playing increasingly significant strategic roles in the practices and processes through which value is co-created in the market. It is therefore concluded that the idea of consumers, and media audiences in particular, as recipients of communication and targets of marketing activities needs to be problematized and the dynamic strategic roles that consumers currently play in the market need to be acknowledged and actively incorporated into the business praxis of media corporations.

Configurable Culture: Mainstreaming the Remix, Remixing the Mainstream

by Aram Sinnreich

My 2007 doctoral dissertation from USC Annenberg.

This dissertation examines the emergence of new musical aesthetics and practices based around networked media... more This dissertation examines the emergence of new musical aesthetics and practices based around networked media technologies, from remix music to file sharing, and argues that these “configurable” technologies and practices compel us to
reexamine our assumptions about both cultural production and social organization. The research is multi-theoretical and multi-methodological, bringing together elements of cultural studies, social network analysis, personality psychology, art history, and musicology, and drawing data primarily from personal interviews with musicians, music industry executives, and attorneys, as well as self-reported attitudes about emerging cultural practices from a survey of 1,765 American adults.

I begin by reviewing the social history of musical regulation, and the resistance that this regulation has engendered. I also propose a mechanism by which musical aesthetics influence social organization, helping to explain the universality  of musical regulation and resistance across a broad range of social milieus. I argue that the dialectical tension between these opposing ethics has operated as a vital engine of aesthetic innovation. However, I argue, this process is bounded by a discursive framework that overdetermines our understanding of music’s role in society, and that both sustains and is sustained by dominant social institutions.

Next, I demonstrate that configurable technologies and practices undermine the discursive boundaries that have been in place for the past two centuries, which I term the “modern ontological framework.” I draw upon interview and survey data to explore the ways in which musicians, lawmakers, and everyday people are developing new ways to understand music and cultural production, as the definitional binaries underpinning the modern framework continue to erode into shades of gray.

Finally, I analyze these data in an effort to determine whether a new discourse based on configurability may be replacing the modern framework, and what such a discourse might entail in terms of social organization. I describe five principles: Configurable Collectivism, The Reunion of Labor, The Collision of Public and Private, The Shift from Linearity to Recursiveness, and The Emergence of DJ Consciousness. Their net effect, I argue, suggests a roadmap for the emergence of new social forms and institutions in the networked age.

"Lo spleen di Hollywood. Lo spettatore flâneur nell'era dell'algoritmo" in Federico Zecca (a cura), Il cinema della convergenza. Industria, racconto, pubblico, Milano / Udine, Mimesis, 2012, pp. 205-218.

by Alberto Brodesco

Lo spazio della (nuova) flânerie audiovisiva – flânerie crossmediale o cyberflânerie – è allestito nella struttura... more Lo spazio della (nuova) flânerie audiovisiva – flânerie crossmediale o cyberflânerie – è allestito nella struttura stessa del media franchise, nelle narrazioni larghe, che offrono ampi margini di divagazione; nel racconto incompleto, frammentato, percorso da faglie intratestuali; nella possibilità per lo spettatore di dialogare allo specchio con il proprio sé algoritmizzato... Il flâneur si muove senza impacci subendo contemporaneamente le leggi d’attrazione di due poli magnetici: l’imprevedibilità dei comportamenti di visione e l’inevitabilità del calcolo che li insegue, la spinta oziosa e improduttiva e il richiamo all’ordine dell’industria, la nostalgia come sentimento e come strategia di marketing, lo spleen da fine racconto e quello da mancato guadagno.

Come together, right now: We know somethingʼs happening, but we donʼt know what it is.

by Aram Sinnreich

Review of Henry Jenkins' "Convergence Culture." International Journal of Communication, 2007.

Ironically, given its title and theme, Henry Jenkins’ newest book, Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media... more Ironically, given its title and theme, Henry Jenkins’ newest book, Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide, offers a maddeningly divergent range of ideas, arguments and anecdotes, without ever converging on a single point or conclusion. The book aspires at various junctures to cultural theory, techno-futurism, media criticism, subcultural anthropology, sociopolitical advocacy, and (perhaps most effectively, if most surprisingly) 21st century marketing manifesto. Unfortunately, the whole amounts to something less than the sum of its parts; despite many engaging passages, presented in Jenkins’ typically accessible and entertaining prose style, not one of these many germs of an idea comes to full fruition.

Convergence and Innovation in Telecommunication Services: An Assessment from the Perspective of the Complementary Assets and Dynamic Capabilities Theories

by Americo Cunha

CUNHA, A.B. “Convergence and Innovation in Telecommunication Services: An Assessment from the Perspective of the Complementary Assets and Dynamic Capabilities Theories.” International Journal of Innovation and Technology Management, v. 6, p. 41, 2009.

Most of the telecommunications service providers, TSPs, are running their businesses based on few profitable services... more Most of the telecommunications service providers, TSPs, are running their businesses based on few profitable services from the eighties, despite the fact that new network technologies have already been disposed of the organization infrastructures to provide new convergent services. The introduction of new telecommunications services seems to lag behind the rate of technological innovations in network equipment and the devices of end users. Consequently, this paper investigates whether or not the internal resources configuration of the Brazilian TSPs is affecting their capacity for services innovation. Based on an evaluation of the critical assets to telecommunications services innovation, this paper concludes with a discussion about TSP organization boundaries and outsourcing strategies.

A European television history

by Andreas Fickers

This is the final draft version of the book which is published as:
Jonathan Bignell & Andreas Fickers (eds.) A European Television History (Wiley-Blackwell, 2008).

European Television History brings together television historians and media scholars to chart the development of... more European Television History brings together television historians and media scholars to chart the development of television in Europe since its inception. The volume interrogates the history of the medium in divergent political, economic, cultural and ideological national contexts.

Taking a comparative approach to the topic, the volume is organized around a set of common questions, themes, and methodological reflections. It deals with European television in the context of television historiography and transnational traditions. Case study chapters written by scholars from different European countries to reflect their specific areas of expertise

The Emergence of Television as a Conservative Media Revolution: Historicising a Process of Remediation in the Post-War Western Europen Mass Media Ensemble

by Andreas Fickers

Article published in Journal of Modern European History Vol. 10: 1 (2012), pp. 49-75.

This article claims that the emergence of television in the 1950s must be interpreted as a conservative media... more This article claims that the emergence of television in the 1950s must be interpreted as a conservative media revolution. It aims at revisiting some of the popular narratives about the emergence of television as a revolutionary moment in media history and questions the newness of television in the European mass media ensemble. Focusing on a set of privileged sites of negotiation where the tensions between the conservative and modernising agencies of the medium became most visible or explicit, the article emphasizes the ambiguous and contested nature of television as a new medium. Finally, the author pleas for an integral approach to media history that studies the intermedial relationships and interdependencies between television and other mass media.

Video: incorporeal, incorporated

by Stephen Partridge

Presented at CHart Conference, British Academy November 2005

Video: incorporeal, incorporated


‘… video has only a conceptual, and not formal connection to any... more Video: incorporeal, incorporated


‘… video has only a conceptual, and not formal connection to any previous medium…formalist research into magnetic videotape seems absurd, whereas the development of film’s photographic essence was actually the foundation of experimental film,’
Continual and changing, convergence places us (artists and audience) in a post film and video era, where digital forms (mostly) replace, substitute, or simulate the previous media. It may be worth asking whether this matters and why in the process of convergence, video has been substituted, while film has been simulated by digital technologies. To answer this question, there is a need to re-examine the development of video as a medium and its incorporation into digital form, while making some comparisons with film, and in turn, its simulation within the digital domain.

The convergence or incorporation of video with digital forms could be considered as almost complete. This distinguishes it from the photographic and material-based medium of film – even though both film and video strive to produce one similar effect – a moving image as perceived by the human brain.

Video was from the start a bastard medium – and inherited a collection of conventions and properties from earlier media including radio, theatre, and, to a lesser extent film. Sean Cubitt has further argued that ‘video is neither an autonomous medium, free of all links with other forms of communication, nor entirely dependent on any one of them’ , and that video is not singular but a collection of ‘video media’. Central to this approach was the notion of intervention into a process, manipulation of the video plane in time or space. Some specificities that have disappeared along with their associated words and acronyms include: electrovision , videotaping, VT, VTR, video shooting, video editing, and video switching.

Within the digital domain video is further merged with the adoption of the filmic conventions of picture origination, editing, aspect ratios and cinematic presentation, but remains incorporeal.

It is significant to examine the convergence between film and video by focussing on the video projector, which provides prima facie evidence of the progress of convergence in its technological form and functionality. Furthermore the optical device used for originating the images is just as likely to be a film camera as a video camera - be it digital or analogue.

The idea that the video projector has merged film and video into a new unified electronic cinema isn’t totally exact. It is still relatively easy to distinguish film from video (and especially computer derived text and vector graphics) when they are projected. Other distinctions lie within the cinematographic: the much higher contrast ratio of film stock, and the human perception of the grain of film emulsions and the film weave within the camera. However, the video projector throws light upon a screen, just as a film projector and very unlike the television tube or LCD or plasma panel, all of which are a source of light. Compared to video, film technology (referring to the camera and projector) has remained relatively stable for eighty years, despite continual small refinements and variations of aspect ratio and gauge. Early digital devices produced for the television visual effects industry such as Quantel’s Harry (1986) incorporated effects that would simulate, and impose upon the video-plane; film grain and film weave to make the resultant product (usually a TV-ad or pop video) look as though it had been shot and produced on film. The works produced by the YBAs in the nineties and the explosion in video-based art-pieces since, also point to a lack of distinction of media. Setting aside these artists’ market-led need for separation and distancing from an experimental film or video history, the works directly reflect the process of convergence.

The new approach is non-materialist – in the sense that there is little interest or even recognition in the video media or the digital media employed. The approach is inherently post-film and post-video, and points towards a convergence within a digital time and space, without medium specificity or material condition.

The total history of cinema suggests a much wider suite of technologies than the film camera and projector. Video continues as a proxy within the digital domain, while film is flattered by digital simulation of its material qualities.

Do Polish converging media users fulfill expected roles? Multi-platformity as a core of media convergence — You Can Dance show example

by Katarzyna Kopecka-Piech

in: New Media [Studies], Katarzyna Kopecka-Piech, Aleksander Woźny (eds.), Wroclaw 2011.

Revistas on-line em plataformas móveis

by Rodrigo Cunha

Co-authored with L. Graciela Natanshn; published in 'Eco-Pós', from Federal University of Rio de Janeiro. 2010.

Este artigo analisa as transformações que estão ocorrendo nas revistas em redes cibernéticas, mapeando as formas... more Este artigo analisa as transformações que estão ocorrendo nas revistas em redes cibernéticas, mapeando as formas específicas que as interfaces de revistas adquirem para se adequar a estes novos cenários, enfatizando na migração das revistas para os dispositivos móveis, a exemplo de celulares, e-readers e tablets.
Pretende-se refletir sobre as transformações trazidas pela sucessão de inovações em dispositivos e as novas interfaces para a distribuição e consumo de jornalismo de revista em ambiente online.

North America: Multiplying media in a dynamic landscape

by Carrie Buchanan

Coauthored with Mahmoud Eid, Associate Professor, University of Ottawa. A survey of the North American media landscape in 2005. Originally written for a UNESCO publication that did not get finished, so we approached other publishers with it.

Perhaps no region on earth has been as affected by the dramatic pace and extent of media development since 1990 as... more Perhaps no region on earth has been as affected by the dramatic pace and extent of media development since 1990 as North America, where most have ready access to new media, such as the Internet and the latest telecommunications devices, as well as the traditional newspapers, radio and television. Even traditional media have undergone profound change as convergence and cross–ownership brought them together in vast media conglomerates dominated by a handful of global corporations. Digitization has taken hold in the United States and Canada, increasing commodification and cross– ownership of all forms of communication, from movies and music to the written word, and bringing together once separate domains of print, broadcasting, telecommunications and computer technology. Yet all is not monolithic on the North American scene. This increasing concentration of ownership has evolved at the same time as increasing fragmentation of media markets and outlets. Explosive growth in cable and satellite television channels, musical variety and the Internet, have given citizens many more choices and in some cases easier access to outlets for their own creative and political expression. Throughout North America, increasing cultural diversity has also led to products and policies serving multicultural needs in an information society. As a less powerful, less populous neighbor with close economic and cultural ties to the United States, Canada’s history has been one of resisting cultural and economic domination. This theme continues in the current era, in the face of evolving trade agreements attempting to drop restrictions and barriers.

Cross media: When the web doesn't go alone

by Francesca Pasquali

Young Italians' Cross-media Cultures

by Francesca Pasquali

Published in Observatorio (OBS*), Vol 2, No 1 (2008)

The article discusses the findings of a qualitative study aimed at investigating the development of new cross-media... more The article discusses the findings of a qualitative study aimed at investigating the development of new cross-media diets and new practices of media consumption and production among Italian young people (aged 14-24). These practices are certainly enabled by the diffusion of broadband, mobile media, digital television and the media convergence processes at the institutional and production level. They are also influenced by social and cultural factors such as age, gender, household composition, the extension of one’s social networks, and so on. The study has followed a multi-sited approach, with the adoption of different techniques of investigation (in depth interviews; participant observation with the support of visual sociology; an exploration of Italian online discussion areas). The article discusses some specificities of this young generation of Italians in the development of cross-platform consumption diets. In particular, it focuses on screen-based media consumption and technologically-mediated interpersonal communication. The findings on Italian youth’s media cultures provide the chance to reflect upon some relevant issues of the contemporary debate about media convergence: especially, the relation between private and public contexts of consumption, between mobile and domestic media, social broadcasting media and networking social media, and linear and non-linear patterns of reception.

The participatory turn in the publishing industry: Rethorics and practices (2011)

by Francesca Pasquali

Special CM Journal Issue ‘Interrogating audiences: Theoretical horizons of participation’, edited by Nico Carpentier & Peter Dahlgren,
BROJ/NUMBER 21 GODINA/YEAR VI ZIMA/WINTER 2011.

The special journal issue ‘Interrogating audiences: Theoretical horizons of participation’, edited by Nico Carpentier & Peter Dahlgren has just been published in the academic journal CM (Communication Management Quarterly). This peer-reviewed special issue aims to contribute to the development of participatory theory within the framework of communication and media studies. As always, this requires careful manoeuvring to reconcile conceptual contingency with the necessary fixity that protects the concept of participation from signifying anything and everything. In order to deepen the theorisations of participation, two strategies have been used in this special issue: In a first cluster of articles, the concept of participation will be confronted with another theoretical concept or tradition that will enrich the theoretical development of participation. In the second cluster of articles, the workings of the notion of participation will be analysed within a specific topical field, which will allow deepening participatory theory by confronting participation with the contextualised logics of that topical field.

Summary: One of the cultural and media areas in which the issue of participa- tion – with all its ambiguity – has... more Summary: One of the cultural and media areas in which the issue of participa- tion – with all its ambiguity – has recently emerged to full significance is the area of literature and publishing. Following the music, film and television industries, the pub- lishing industry is in fact facing a vast renewal due to digitalization processes (assuming digitalization as a complex negotiation between social and technological forces). New textual formats and devices (such as e-books), new forms of distribution (e.g. online retailing), new marketing strategies (e.g. in the social media), new models of business (e.g. the print on demand) are becoming increasingly popular. At the same time digi- talization has enabled the creation of a whole new participatory, grassroots publishing market, while grassroots storytelling and social media (e.g. Twitter, Facebook), used as a collaborative writing environment, bring out participatory forms of online writing that continue the tradition started almost fifteen years ago by the so-called “hypertextual fiction” and the avant-gardes before that. In this context, by addressing the theoretical debate and recent social discourses on the e-book, this article suggests a recognition of the diversity of the forms of participation that are ascribed to the new publishing scenario. Secondly – moving from the Foucauldian notion of author-function – the article solic- its the relationship between author and reader in the contemporary digital publishing scenario and addresses the question whether and under what conditions the supposed participatory turn in writing and publishing we are facing promotes the construction of a polyphonic, co-authored, recognizable, collaborative dialogue, or rather points to a cultural landscape where “all discourses [...] would develop in the anonymity of a murmur” (Foucault, 1969).

Jean-Luc Godard's Passages from the Photographic to the Post-Cinematic.Images in between Intermediality and Convergence

by Ágnes Pethő

Published in Acta Universitatis Sapientiae: Film and Media Studies, 2011, vol.4.

The article begins with an attempt to trace the various domains of Godard’s widespread infl uence that reaches beyond... more The article begins with an attempt to trace the various domains of Godard’s widespread infl uence that reaches beyond contemporary cinema in our post-media culture (installation art, literature, music, graphic design, commercial videos, the current vogue of the “Godardesque” retro look promoted on the scene of fashion world, and fi nally, photography). The advertising strategies used by the Band of Outsiders fashion label using Polaroid photos that reconstruct or imitate Godard images are
analysed in more detail, their connection with a “photo-op” culture and the emergence of the “photo-fi lmic” image is emphasised. The article then connects all these “Godardesque” features that survive in the postcinematic world to the intermedial use of photography in Godard’s films that may have pre-fi gured their post-fi lmic appropriation. Some of the relevant junctures are pointed out between “the cinematic” and the “photographic” revealing how photography in Godard’s fi lms seems to offer a centre stage for inter-medial tensions but it can also facilitate the assimilation by other media. His latest fi lm, Film Socialisme is analysed in this sense as an allegoric passage of the photographic image from intermediality to media convergence.

The meanings and implications of convergence

by Rich Gordon

The meanings of convergence

by Rich Gordon