Presentation

Media Convergence- Challenges/Opportunties on Prezi

Challenges to Creative Industries

Media Convergence provides obvious opportunities for creative industries to circulate and content and advertise although it also proposes many challenges. This is most notably in Journalism and newsrooms.

 “Multiple deadlines create no time constraints and is followed by concerns about how this affects the professionalism of the Journalists and the perceived quality of Journalism”  

(Jenkins, H. 2006. p.21)

This suggests as there is need for up to date news on various platforms such as mobile apps and social networking sites, deadlines are tighter and this often compromises the quality of the news that is broadcasted. Journalists are also required to learn new methods of broadcasting information such as an informal Tweeting and Facebook posts. These informal broadcasting techniques are very different to traditional story and article writing methods and require a lot of skill and can be challenging to people in creative industries to adapt from especially when recently coming out of educational writing styles.

Creative industries are constantly trying to reach the widest audience although have to be aware of social economically excluding certain audiences and social groups who cant access apps on smartphones and regular portable internet etc.

Therefore identifying the best advertising opportunities regular challenges creative industries.

“Good news sites require professional well trained reporters and department people who understand not only news but also the advertising needs.’’

(Storsul, T. 2007. p. 74-75)

    This means that sometimes the audience isn’t able to consume the content.      Therefore creative industries have to consider the exclusivity of their products and define a definitive target audience before producing content.

“The circulation of media content depends heavily of the audiences’ active participation”

(Storsul, T. 2007. p75)

Making sure the audience actively participates requires research and marketing, which isn’t always cost affective. Industries are often challenged to be unique and stand out from the competition. The industries also have to consider sacrifices to stay relevant as for many companies having content available on many different platform compromises their income, because of this companies like Sky News will let you read some content online for free but, often detailed stories and more information is only accessible with payments or subscriptions.

Jenkins, H (2006). Convergence Culture, Old and New Media Collide. New York University Press

(pp.15-16).

Storsul, T (2007). Ambivalence Towards Convergence: Digitalisation & Media Change, Negotiating Convergence In News Productivity. Nordicom (pp.74-75)

Sams final part of the essay with references

Challenges to Society

Although media convergence offers many opportunities to society, it also poses many challenges too. At present day, media “convergence is throwing up new media services at a prodigious rate” (McQuail, D., Siure, K. 1998. Chapter 7), this makes it difficult for society to keep up with every single adaption and addition. However due to most media services being made available on your mobile phone, society feels pressured to keep up-to-date with all of the latest news, apps and technology. This point is well illustrated in this quote taken from the book Media/Society: Industries, Images and Audiences “Talking about social life without including a discussion of the role of mass media risks missing an important element of contemporary society” (Croteau, D., Hoynes, W. 2003. p.16).

Another challenge to society is that people are now informing themselves of the news through the many different media platforms, before socialising with others. “Couples talk over the radio at breakfast as they read the morning paper” (Croteau, D., Hoynes, W. 2003. p.16), this quote implies that media convergence has become such a large section of our lives, so much that we are spending more time engaging with media platforms, than we are not engaging with them. This challenges society as people are socialising less and less with one another the more different media platforms are created, or if they do socialise, it is usually through using media convergence.

Due to the many different media platforms we experience in our everyday life, each of them expressing their own views, a modern challenge to society is to question the media content we are all consuming. “We base most of our knowledge of government on news accounts rather than experience”, this highlights how we “relate to the world of politics” (Croteau, D., Hoynes, W. 2003. p.15), but this can be extended to all media texts. This is because we are unknowingly consuming many different media texts in our everyday life, which could in turn change our views and personal opinions of the subject matter. This relates to the Hypodermic Needle Model where the audience (society) is seen as passive, this means that they are easily influenced by the media and they do not question what media texts are expressing.

Media convergence, in terms of citizen journalism and social networking, has also become a challenge to society. This is because pro-sumers, or citizen journalists, can easily upload media texts to the Internet for the rest of the world to see, but this uploaded information may not necessarily be reliable. A citizen journalist can be anyone who uses “the tools of modern technology and the global distribution of the Internet to create… media on their own”, therefore they have no “professional journalism training” (Glaser, M. 27.09.2006) or rules and regulations to follow.  Hence they can upload any media text to the web. This is a challenge to society as it is hard for consumers to distinguish between what is trustworthy information and what is not. An example of where false citizen journalism quickly had a dramatic affect on a well-known company was back in 2008, when an anonymous pro-sumer posted on CNN’s iReport that Steve Jobs had suffered a heart attack. Within the 25 minutes it took for Apple to crush the allegation, people had began to Tweet and re-post the story on social networking sites, this in turn led to Apple’s stock taking a hit (Dunford, A. 08.08.2008).

Continuing from the previous point, media convergence challenges society as it is difficult to know what Internet sources are reliable. In a survey respondents said they loved how they can get information from different news sites, but they only read the ones they feel get it right (Ostertag, S. F. 2008). This also highlights the fact that there are now so many ways to access similar media stories (due to media convergence), however many of them are from unreliable sources.

A challenge to a section of society, journalists, is that they are expected to work 24/7 and create news stories ‘on the move’ due to media convergence. The quote “multiple deadlines create new time constraints” (Storsul, T., Stuedahl, D. 2007. pp. 74-75) emphasises the fact that journalists are expected to work continuously; this will put strains on their lives outside of work.

Croteau, D., Hoynes, W. (2003). Media Society: Industries, Images and Audiences. 3^rd Ed. Sage Publications. (pp. 15-16).

Dunford, A. (08.08.2008). Economic Downturn, Honesty in Communications and Steve Jobs’ Health. Rocket Watcher.

Glaser, M. (27.09.2006). Your Guide to Citizen Journalism. Media Shift.

McQuail, D., Siure, K. (1998). Media Policy: Convergence, Concentration and Commerce. Sage Publications. (Chapter 7).

Ostertag, S. F. (2008). Negotiating News: A Study of the Social Construction of News Realities. University of Connecticut.

Storsul, T., Stuedahl, D. (2007). Ambivalence Towards Convergence, Digitalization and Media Change, Nordicom. (pp. 74-75).

Hannahs Essay With References

My essay the bit in red is what I need the link for to reference :)

The media industries use different forms of public media like Facebook and YouTube to help stay relevant and “up to date” with the fast changing society. [Grant A. E. Wilkinson, 2009]This is a brilliant opportunity for creative industries as for example companies who make sitcoms can now communicate more directly with wider audiences who may not watch television by converging their media through these platforms. For example on shows such as “Only way is Essex” and “Made in Chelsea” the characters post tweets about episodes telling their sides of the story. The industry also use social networking to stay connected to the public in a less formal way weather it is reporting news or presenters talking about their day. The industries do this to almost get on a level with the public and relate to them in a more personal way than they can through a television or a radio.



“Dominant actors are repositioning to control the whole media process from content inception to delivering to individual audience segments” [Jenkins.H 2006] This quote implies opportunity to creative industries as they use convergence to broadcast their views and opinions. The more dominant the companies are, the more people they reach and therefore the more widely believed their opinions are. In a way they are controlling the way audiences think, as if people are fed the same message over various media platforms the opinion of the industry almost becomes a fact to the audience. This control over people’s way of thinking grows as the companies converge through the different platforms reaching wider audiences. “One thing about the internet is you have more access with sites. I can go to different websites and see what’s being said. I get a different view point.” [Stephen F. Ostertag 2005] This proves what audiences see through different internet platforms controls the way they think. The more power dominant media companies have means they have more media texts all over different platforms on the internet which gets viewed more frequently. The more it is seen the more widely it is believed by media audiences.



Convergence is a huge benefit to creative industries because it can reach wider audiences with the same media text presented in a different way to suit the consumer. “For the advertiser, it means researching the local customer in different, cost effective ways – communing facts in print, feelings on TV and speed in radio and net.” The advertiser now has to think not only about who will consume what text but about what platform the person will consume it on. What this quote is saying is as the convergence of media increases through advancing technology audience groups are beginning to separate through what different platforms they consume media through therefore there are more audience groups to reach. This means that because of convergence audiences are fragmenting and becoming more niche as there are more opportunities to view the text on a platform your consumer group prefers. I.e. A person doesn’t like watching the XFactor as they don’t like to see all the soppy emotions and finds it boring but still likes to know what is going on so therefore they read the articles about the show in the following day’s paper. Because of this creative industries are getting a wider variety of niche audiences viewing their media texts through cost efficient convergence via internet generating a lot more revenue.



Creative industries are now finding more efficient and cost effective ways to converge media. “News organisations are beginning to not only appreciate, but to seek out reporters who can incorporate the internet into their news style.” [Stephen F. Ostertag 2005] This is a cheaper way for industries to stay up to date with convergence instead of having several different staff working on different areas e.g. TV, print and internet they can seek out just one person to tick all the boxes. They also rely on these reporters to use social networking to keep the public up to date because again this is another very cost efficient way to advertise their company to the public and report news very quickly as they don’t need to post a full article on the networking site. The better the reporter is with incorporating internet into their news style the more likely it is that they will be able to get the best stories out a lot quicker.

Grant.A. E, Wilkinson.J.S. (2009), Understanding Media Convergence the State of Field, Oxford University Press, Chapter 4: The Converged Audience-Reciever-Senders and Contnt Creators

Jenkins.H, (2006), Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide, New York University Press.

Stephen F.Ostertag (2005), Negotiating News: A Study of the Social Construction of News Realities, University of Connecticut.

Our chosen song: Making Me Nervous- Brad Sucks

Royalty Free Music - Stock Music Library | Jamendo PRO
This song, Making Me nervous, by the Canadian band 'Brad Sucks', taken from their album 'I Don't Know What I'm Doing' is the song we have chosen for our Media Convergence video. We found this song on the royalty free music website Jamendo, which states it is the number 1 platform for free music. We chose this song as we felt the rhythm and beat matched the pace we wanted to edit our video to and the electronic sound also links in well with digital media.

Our Essay

What is Media Convergence, and what are its opportunities and challenges to Creative Industries and also to Society as a whole?

Media “convergence refers to a process, not an end point” (Jenkins, H. 2006. p. 16), it is where once separated divisions, such as television, the Internet, print and radio have merged together. Through our investigation we have realised that “there is no single, agreed-upon definition of convergence” (Grant, E. A., Wilkinson, S. J. 2009), as the term media convergence covers such a broad range of media related aspects which include social, technological and industrial factors.

“No one knows what it is but thinks that it must be great, everyone thinks that everyone else is doing it, those say they are doing it are probably lying, the few that are doing it aren’t doing it well, once they start doing it they realise it’s going to take them a long time to do it right, they’ll soon start realising there is no ’right’ way to do it” (Grant, E. A., Wilkinson, S. J. 2009), this is Jim Carroll’s off-quoted explanation of why it’s like teenage sex. This quote proves how media convergence is continuously developing and how both industry and society use it in a variety of ways to benefit themselves and others.

An example of media convergence in modern day can be seen through the transition from print e.g. the Guardian newspaper to their news app and website. These Internet services allow journalists to update the news feed in real time, oppose to the daily or weekly delivery of newspapers. Convergence has also improved the range of content available for audiences to consume, as on the website, videos, pictures and unreleased reports may also be published.

In this essay we will be investigating the challenges and opportunities media convergence creates for both creative industries and society.  

Media Convergence provides obvious opportunities for creative industries to circulate and content and advertise although it also proposes many challenges for industries. This is most notably in Journalism and newsrooms.

 “Multiple deadlines create no time constraints and is followed by concerns about how this affects the professionalism of the Journalists and the perceived quality of Journalism”. This suggests as there is need for up to date news on various platforms such as mobile apps and social networking sites, deadlines are tighter and this often compromises the quality of the news that is broadcasted. Journalists are also required to learn new methods of broadcasting information such as an informal Tweeting and Facebook posts. These informal broadcasting techniques are very different to traditional story and article writing methods and require a lot of skill and can be challenging to people in creative industries to adapt from especially when recently coming out of education.

Creative industries are constantly trying to reach the widest audience although they have to be aware of social economically excluding certain audiences and social groups who cant access apps on smartphones and regular portable internet. Therefore, creating alternative options and identifying the best advertising opportunities for niche audiences, is a challenge to the creative industries.

“Good news sites require professional well trained reporters and department people who understand not only news but also the advertising needs.’’ This means that sometimes the audience isn’t able to consume the content. Therefore creative industries have to consider the exclusivity of their products and define a definitive target audience before producing content.

“The circulation of media content depends heavily of the audiences’ active participation”. Making sure the audience actively participates requires research and marketing, which isn’t always cost affective. Industries are often challenged to be unique and stand out from the competition. The industries also have to consider sacrifices to stay relevant as for many companies having content available on many different platform compromises their income, because of this companies like Sky News will let you read some content online for free but, often detailed stories and more information is only accessible with payments or subscriptions.

“Media need social networking sites and YouTube to help them change and stay relevant". Media industries
use different forms of public media like Facebook and YouTube to help stay relevant and “up to date” with the fast changing society. This is a brilliant opportunity for creative industries as for example companies who make sitcoms can now communicate more directly with wider audiences who may not watch television by converging their media through these platforms. For example on shows such as “Only way is Essex” and “Made in Chelsea” the characters post tweets about episodes telling their sides of the story. The industry also use social networking to stay connected to the public in a less formal way weather it is reporting news or presenters talking about their day. The industries do this to almost get on a level with the public and relate to them in a more personal way than they can through a television or a radio.


“Dominant actors are repositioning to control the whole media process from content inception to delivering to individual audience segments” This quote implies opportunity to creative industries as they use convergence to broadcast their views and opinions. The more dominant the companies are, the more people they reach and therefore the more widely believed their opinions are. In a way they are controlling the way audiences think, as if people are fed the same message over various media platforms the opinion of the industry almost becomes a fact to the audience. This control over people’s way of thinking grows as the companies converge through the different platforms reaching wider audiences. “One thing about the internet is you have more access with sites. I can go to different websites and see what’s being said. I get a different view point.” This proves what audiences see through different internet platforms controls the way they think. The more power dominant media companies have means they have more media texts all over different platforms on the internet which gets viewed more frequently. The more it is seen the more widely it is believed by media audiences.

Convergence is a huge benefit to creative industries because it can reach wider audiences with the same media text presented in a different way to suit the consumer. “For the advertiser, it means researching the local customer in different, cost effective ways – communing facts in print, feelings on TV and speed in radio and net.” The advertiser now has to think not only about who will consume what text but about what platform the person will consume it on. What this quote is saying is as the convergence of media increases through advancing technology audience groups are beginning to separate through what different platforms they consume media through therefore there are more audience groups to reach. This means that because of convergence audiences are fragmenting and becoming more niche as there are more opportunities to view the text on a platform your consumer group prefers. I.e. A person doesn’t like watching the XFactor as they don’t like to see all the soppy emotions and finds it boring but still likes to know what is going on so therefore they read the articles about the show in the following day’s paper. Because of this creative industries are getting a wider variety of niche audiences viewing their media texts through cost efficient convergence via internet generating a lot more revenue.


Creative industries are now finding more efficient and cost effective ways to converge media. “News organisations are beginning to not only appreciate, but to seek out reporters who can incorporate the internet into their news style.” This is a cheaper way for industries to stay up to date with convergence instead of having several different staff working on different areas e.g. TV, print and internet they can seek out just one person to tick all the boxes. They also rely on these reporters to use social networking to keep the public up to date because again this is another very cost efficient way to advertise their company to the public and report news very quickly as they don’t need to post a full article on the networking site. The better the reporter is with incorporating internet into their news style the more likely it is that they will be able to get the best stories out a lot quicker.

"Convergence is throwing up new media services at a prodigious rate"[1] 

From this quote we can understand the alarming rate that technology is changing and forming how society lives today. New media services are created to enhance and aid society’s needs, for example, the introduction of ordering simple items - such as groceries, online. This has benefited those in our communities whom are physically unable to complete such simple tasks. Another positive effect convergence has on society, is that it allows consumers to be linked throughout products and ideas they are interested in at their own will and leisure. The easy to use system and flexibility of convergence is a key element in advancing modern technologies as well as being a modern marketing tool.

We can see convergence powering our newspapers and journalists in a way that is much more efficient and up-to-date than ever before as news websites are updated constantly and stories can be reported via social networks almost instantly. "For the end consumer, it means getting the latest local information and news under the reliable Turun Sanomat brand in real time, through different channels. The customer pays only for the paper subscription fee - a few cents a day for home delivered news, information and entertainment."[2]

This quote shows us how much convergence has thoroughly benefited society on a news front. With live updates and a variety of channels to choose from, relative and instant information can be gathered for the consumer. Not only does this save time and money, but it allows the user to be in control and filter the information as they please.

“Visitors may find stories that editors decided not to run or air because of time and space constraints associated with paper and televised news venues.”[3Stephen F]  From this we can see how convergence actually improves the volume of news and information an audience can receive. Due to the limited space/time involved in News shows and Newspaper print, journalists are unable to air all of their reports, but with the use of convergence, we now have online news feeds which can hold all reports, regardless of popularity or importance.

There are many different levels of media convergence; with technologies, we can see constant updating of news and business. The internet holds text, audio, video and allows the user to browse media at their free will. As for content - the correct and relevant content must be chosen for each medium, this also allows a lot of space and change for how content is produced.  
"Skepticism among the public regarding the highly staged, professionalized and exclusionary nature of mediated reality in fact has pushed people towards pursuing alternative – include their own – media formats."[4]

The production of content is now varied, due to interactivity and the increase of 'user created content' there are many opportunities for society to be creative, "Interactive new media has become a true benefit to everyone because people can express their artwork in more than one way with the technology that we have today and there is no longer a limit with what we can do with our creativity."[5] We can see as referenced in the 'New Media Branding' that as convergence has transformed and grown throughout the years, it has effected how audiences create their own content using these updates. 

"Filmmakers started using inexpensive digital cameras to create films. It was also the time when moving image technology had developed, which was able to be viewed on computer desktops in full motion." [6] Convergence has undoubtedly helped shape our society creatively and socially, as with more user content being created; new ways of connecting these ideas with friends and the public are becoming available. Convergence has enabled us access to the internet, social networks, instant messaging all from the palm of the consumer’s hand, via Iphone, Blackberry, laptop etc.  "Beyond the artifacts that have sprung from this development—sites such as facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace, Wikipedia, digg, del.icio.us, YouTube, and flickr—there is a broader process at work, a growing pattern of movement through online spaces to form connections with others, build virtual communities, and engage in self-expression. "[7]

Convergence has affected society on a larger scale than just local communities. Reports from Iran during June in the 2009 protests revealed that censorship and restrictions had been avoided by Iranian citizens using the social network site Twitter, to report events and get their voices heard in real time.

“Iranian activists were using Twitter as a tool for mobilization and for providing accounts of events as they were happening.”[8]

“While the front pages of Iranian newspapers were full of blank space where censors had whited-out news stories, Twitter was delivering information from street level, in real time”[9]

We can see here the contrast in the forms of Media used, as the newspapers were heavily government controlled, useless to protesters and containing unreliable sources, edited in favor of the reigning government. However, Twitters system was not only free, but allowed first-hand, public eye-witnesses to report instantly on the events, delivering a more truthful and useful feed of information.


Although media convergence offers many opportunities to society, it also poses many challenges too. At present day, media “convergence is throwing up new media services at a prodigious rate”, this makes it difficult for society to keep up with every single adaption and addition. However due to most media services being made available on your mobile phone, society feels pressured to keep up-to-date with all of the latest news, apps and technology. This point is well illustrated in this quote taken from the book Media/Society: Industries, Images and Audiences “Talking about social life without including a discussion of the role of mass media risks missing an important element of contemporary society”.

Another challenge to society is that people are now informing themselves of the news through the many different media platforms, before socialising with others. “Couples talk over the radio at breakfast as they read the morning paper”, this quote implies that media convergence has become such a large section of our lives, so much that we are spending more time engaging with media platforms, than we are not engaging with them. This challenges society as people are socialising less and less with one another the more different media platforms are created, or if they do socialise, it is usually through using media convergence.

Due to the many different media platforms we experience in our everyday life, each of them expressing their own views, a modern challenge to society is to question the media content we are all consuming. “We base most of our knowledge of government on news accounts rather than experience”, this highlights how we “relate to the world of politics”, but this can be extended to all media texts. This is because we are unknowingly consuming many different media texts in our everyday life, which could in turn change our views and personal opinions of the subject matter. This relates to the Hypodermic Needle Model where the audience (society) is seen as passive, this means that they are easily influenced by the media and they do not question what media texts are expressing.

Media convergence, in terms of citizen journalism and social networking, has also become a challenge to society. This is because pro-sumers, or citizen journalists, can easily upload media texts to the Internet for the rest of the world to see, but this uploaded information may not necessarily be reliable. A citizen journalist can be anyone who uses “the tools of modern technology and the global distribution of the Internet to create… media on their own”, therefore they have no “professional journalism training” or rules and regulations to follow.  Hence they can upload any media text to the web. This is a challenge to society as it is hard for consumers to distinguish between what is trustworthy information and what is not. An example of where false citizen journalism quickly had a dramatic affect on a well-known company was back in 2008, when an anonymous pro-sumer posted on CNN’s iReport that Steve Jobs had suffered a heart attack. Within the 25 minutes it took for Apple to crush the allegation, people had began to Tweet and re-post the story on social networking sites, this in turn led to Apple’s stock taking a hit.

Continuing from the previous point, media convergence challenges society as it is difficult to know what Internet sources are reliable. In a survey respondents said they loved how they can get information from different news sites, but they only read the ones they feel get it right. This also highlights the fact that there are now so many ways to access similar media stories (due to media convergence), however many of them are from unreliable sources.

A challenge to a section of society, journalists, is that they are expected to work 24/7 and create news stories ‘on the move’ due to media convergence. The quote “multiple deadlines create new time constraints” emphasises the fact that journalists are expected to work continuously; this will put strains on their lives outside of work. 

In conclusion, we can see that media convergence, despite its disadvantages, is needed by both industries and society to progress and grow. We have learnt from our investigation that the benefits of convergence heavily outweigh the drawbacks, and that convergence creates healthy competition for both journalists and businesses, whom strive to become better and bigger, which in the end, provides better and more up-to-date services for consumers. We expect these services to continuously grow as "convergence refers to a process, not an end point" (Jenkins, H. 2006. p. 16).

Intro references:

Jenkins, H. (2006). Convergence Culture Where Old and New Media Collide. New York University Press. (p. 16).

Grant, E. A., Wilkinson, S. J. (2009). Understanding Media Convergence, the State of Field. Oxford University Press.

Johns Script

Here is my script that we are going to use in the video.


Media convergence proposes many challenges to creative industries, most notably in journalism. Where due to advances in technology and advances in technology and demand for up to date news journalists are expected to work round the clock ; Tweeting, posting on Facebook and publishing Internet articles, which often compromises the quality of the news that is broadcasted.