what is convergence culture

Alice, Lauren, Emma and Lucy

Convergence culture is where old media and new media collide, according to Jenkins we are now entering the convergence culture.

“What Nicholas Negroponte labelled the transformation of “atoms to bits,” the digitization of all media content. When words, images and sounds are transformed into digital information, we expand the potential relationships between them and enable them to flow across platforms.”

We think that by this, Jenkins means how everything – from the written word to photographs – can now be made digital, or technical. We have “converted” speech into something “technological”.

“The horizontal integration of the entertainment industry. A company like AOL Time Warner now controls interests in film, television, books, games, the Web, music, real estate and countless other sectors. The result has been the restructuring of cultural production around “synergies,” and thus the transmedia exploitation of branded properties— Pokemon,Harry Potter, Tomb Raider, Star Wars.”

This means that media companies are expanding to be more economical, to make more money. As they grow, so does their income, as well as their ability to dominate. They are “converting” their companies to support not just one industry (e.g. Film or television), therefore developing “economically”.

“Consumers’ multitasking strategies for navigating the new information environment. Organic convergence is what occurs when a high schooler is watching baseball on a big-screen television, listening to techno on the stereo, wordprocessing a paper and writing e-mail to his friends. It may occur inside or outside the box, but ultimately, it occurs within the user’s cranium”

Organic/social convergence could relate to how we find out new information by using different mediums and then we communicate it – passing on information to those that do not know it. It is a learning experience, and we are part of it by learning and teaching. We are “converting” our knowledge to something “social”.

“The explosion of new forms of creativity at the intersections of various media technologies, industries and consumers. Media convergence fosters a new participatory folk culture by giving average people the tools to archive, annotate, appropriate and recirculate content. Shrewd companies tap this culture to foster consumer loyalty and generate low-cost content. Media convergence also encourages transmedia storytelling, the development of content across multiple channels. As producers more fully exploit organic convergence, storytellers will use each channel to communicate different kinds and levels of narrative information, using each medium to do what it does best.”

This means that different cultures get to experience the same media. It is broadcasted over the internet to a wide audience. This could also be seen as social convergence, as it is basically the learning and teaching process but across a larger spectrum of people. We are “converting” our knowledge to different “cultures”.

“The cultural hybridity that results from the international circulation of media content. In music, the world-music movement produces some of the most interesting contemporary sounds, and in cinema, the global circulation of Asian popular cinema profoundly shapes Hollywood entertainment. These new forms reflect the experience of being a citizen of the “global village.””

This means how every country around the world effects us. We all influence how everywhere else works. We contribute new ideas to cultures that have never experienced some of the things we may have.