Convergence Culture

When talking about covergence Henry Jenkins (2006) he says that he means

Henry Jenkins

I found this amusing image online!

 "the flow of content across multiple media platforms, the cooperation between multiple media industries, and the migratory behaviour of media audiences who would go almost anywhere in search of the kinds of entertainment experiences they wanted. Convergence is a word that manages to describe technological, industrial, cultural, and social changes, depending on who's speaking and what they think they are talking about"

Basically the concept that Henry Jenkins suggests is that people are finding different information on different platforms. For example instead of purchasing magazines in a shop, I can now read them online.
 Another theorist Terry Flew (2002) says that "we can define new media as those forms that combine the three C's: Computing and information technology, Communication networks, and digitised media and information content..."

One example of convergence in my media use is now that I am at university instead of phoning my parents is using Skype to talk to them instead. A Similar example to this is at Christmas time we usually have a phone call to my Auntie in America but this time we decided to sit round a laptop and have a Skype conversation with my Auntie and Uncle instead.

Another example of my media use converging is that now I'm at university I haven't got a television so watch programmes on iplayer and 4od, this have become a part of my daily routne to catch up with soaps and other programmes that I have missed online.

A further example of convergence in my recent media use is the fact that I don't have to get paper copies of books for non academic readings, for relaxing texts to read, instead I am able to download free e-books or choose to pay for them and read them on my Blackberry phone instead.

I have a friend in spain who I met on Flickr who wanted to improve his English and so I suggested we became pen pals, however as my friend Andres said would take weeks to recieve a letter and so he suggested using msn messenger to improve his writing and skype to use spoken English on. This shows the convergence of writing letters by hand to keeping in contact via being online at the same time as another person.

Convergence is happening over all areas of the media and it is evident from my examples that in my opinion it is a good thing because for example people will need less media devices to access the information that they want for example I have my laptop for watching television programmes, listening and buying music and also to skype my friends. So my laptop could replace devices such as a television, ipod and also a telephone. Another advantage of convergence in the media is that people can become more easily informed, rather than using traditional sources of media such as a newspaper, they can just log onto their laptop and get news instantly and therefore media becomes more accessible for everyone.