Beyond Covergence: a New Way to Look at

Communications Professions

Convergence Culture Recognizes that:

• ‘Mass messages’ are so 1990s• People spend less time with traditional

media, and more time online• WOM and peer reviews are becoming

important information sources• Pull’ technologies (TIVO) allow people to

create own mediated experiences

Convergence to Confluence?

• Convergence: channel based– Conglomeration of media, accessed

from any point.

• Confluence: message based– A flowing together of two or more

streams.– The point of juncture of such streams.– The combined stream formed by this

juncture.

Confluence Culture

• Participatory – Consumers are active– Producers and consumers no longer

separate• Remediation

– New media both diverge from and reproduce ‘old’ media

Confluence Culture

• Collective Intelligence– Learning becomes a collective

process– People look to each other to ‘make

sense’• Collective Meaning Making

– Bricolage: remixing of content for new messages

– Repurposing old to make the new

Confluence

• Messages flow seamlessly among media channels

• Technology becomes adaptive and associative– Multiplatform engagement– Rich dialogue– Proclivity for ‘mashups’ or bricolage

New Ways of Working

• Nick Haley iPod ad• "Professional" version• M and Ms• HP/Jumper Commercial • HBO Voyeur Storytelling • Liberty Mutual's Responsibility

Project

The Challenge for Communications

Professions

• To not only create messages, but help others manage the creation (and ultimately comprehension) of messages

Identified Issues: Keen, Cult of the Amateur

• Ethics– Amateurs don’t have same standards as professionals

• Economic viability– What was a source of income is now free..e.g. Craig’s

List

• Credibility– Who is responsible for accuracy of information?

• Democracy– The “YouTubification of politics…infantalizes the

political process, silencing the public discource.”

Additional Challenges for Academics

• How to help students learn important skills?– http://j340fallblog.wordpress.com/– http://adwiki.wetpaint.com/

• How to help them become professionals in an ‘amateur’ world

• How to come to grips with the new nature of ‘knowledge’