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Media Convergence in the 21st Century

We all know that in this modern age today we are all surrounded by the digital media environment where all modes of communication and information are continually reforming to adapt to the enduring demands of technologies. Changing the way we create, consume, learn and interact with each other.

According to Britannica (2015) Media Convergence is a phenomenon involving the interconnection of information and communications technologies, computer networks, and media content. It brings together the “three C’s” computing, communication, and content and is a direct consequence of the digitization of media content and the popularization of the Internet. But according to Distinct Studios (2015) Media convergence is the merging of mass communication outlets -print, television, radio, the Internet along with portable and interactive technologies through various digital media platforms. It allows mass media professionals to tell stories and present information and entertainment using a variety of media. Converged communication provides multiple tools for storytelling, allowing consumers to select level of interactivity while self-directing content delivery. This digital convergence of news media, in particular, was called "Mediamorphosis" by researcher Roger Fidler, in his 1997 book by that name.

In their book Media Convergence: Networked Digital Media in Everyday Life, Graham Meikle and Sherman Young observe that convergence can be understood in four dimensions. The first one is technological it is the combination of computing communications and content around networked digital platforms. The technological dimension of convergence is the most readily understood. With the World Wide Web, smartphones, tablet computers, smart televisions, and other digital devices, billions of people are now able to access media content that was once tied to specific communications media (print and broadcast) or platforms (newspapers, magazines, radio, television, and cinema). Next is industrial, it is the engagement of established media institutions in the digital media space, and the rise of digitally-based companies such as Google, Apple, Microsoft and others as significant media content providers. Third one is social it is the rise of social network media such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, and the growth of user-created content such as blogs and micro blogging. And the last one is textual, the re-use and remixing of media into what has been termed a ‘transmedia’ model, where stories and media content (for example, sounds, images, written text) are dispersed across multiple media platforms. While technological change is a constant feature of modern economies, the changes associated with convergence, digitization and networking have been seen as providing the basis for a new ‘techno-economic paradigm’. This is a term developed by innovation economists to refer to 50-year cycles of changes to the technological and knowledge base of societies. A techno-economic paradigm is defined as a cluster of inter-related technical, organizational, and managerial innovations whose advantages are to be found not only in a new range of products and systems, but most of all in the dynamics of the relative cost structure of all possible inputs to production.

Changes in the way users produce, distribute, access and re-use information, knowledge and entertainment potentially give rise to increased user autonomy, increased participation and increased diversity. That is one of the goals of Media Convergence in the 21st century where we can see the progress and evolution of modern era. As Jacques Ellul said, “Modern technology has become a total phenomenon for civilization, in which efficiency is no longer an option but a necessity imposed on all human activity”.