Reading Response 2 - Katie Kraska

Media Convergence 

Notes: 

-       collective meaning-making changing the ways we view politics, religion, education, etc.

-       Convergence talk = access to media easy through cell phones, interactivity; media industry going through paradigm shift (happened in 90’s with passive old media to new interactive media), assimilate or take over? Also talks about media ownership concentration, New Orleans example (convergence is hard, fast, and everyone must learn to work together)

-       Pool (prophet of convergence) = single physical means may carry multiple traditional media, freedom fostered when means of comm. dispersed and decentralized while central control when comm. concentrated monopolized and scarce

-       Media = technology that enables communication (delivery system) AND associated protocols; content, audience, and social status can change but is sustained when satisfying some demand = new media not replacing old but co exist; no new black box to invest in because protocols not changing with change of delivery system. Convergence affects both the way we produce and consume media.

-       Cultural Logic of Media Convergence = talk with people far away (virtual reality?); new media lowers production costs and gain access and recirculate WHILE hugely concentrated into corporations (gatekeepers); struggle between the two to redefine American culture, all forms of media extend to other points of cultural production; knowledge communities form around mutual intellectual interests where no expertise exists; “affective economics” brand community; transmedia storytelling (making a fictional world); digital divide,

Personally, I didn’t see much ends to this reading – perhaps because it was an introduction to the other chapters of the book that go more in depth. Or perhaps because to my generation and that which immediately follows mine are so accustomed to media convergence and divergence that the terms are no longer marked. What I find most interesting is considering how these changes in media will affect the population at large; narrowcasting to increase tribalism or universal access increasing a hegemonic global attitude.  Art has been concerned with this media convergence in technology, both in terms of accessibility and copyright and as a media itself. If we follow older theories of medium specificity in terms of technology - the type of technology defining the message and the content having little to no importance - then the way that non-new-media-art is accessed entirely alters its intended meaning.