Explain how media convergence leads to interactivity
Answers
THE CONCEPT OF MEDIA CONVERGENCE
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.
Media convergence is the blending of multiple media forms into one platform for purposes of delivering a dynamic experience.
Technologically rich societies have entered the digital age, and media industries are grappling with new opportunities – and threats – afforded by what is called “convergence”. Media people tend to get very excited about convergence, because it holds so much promise. The melding together of different media, incorporating new personalized services is both impressive and overwhelming.
The adoption of high-performance computers, shift to digital platforms, and creation of high-speed computer networks have brought us new ways of doing things. Old barriers of time and space are practically eliminated. You can view, hear, or read virtually anything, anywhere, anytime. The old definitions that provided separation between Radio, TV, Cable, Newspapers, and Film have gone（or are going）forever. The 1990’s brought ownership convergence, creating media conglomerates like Disney, Viacom, and Sony. From the consumer view, the Internet has recently changed our favorite delivery systems – Newspapers now provide video, TV offers interactive chat, and radio has web-cams.
With 3G telephony, mass media companies can include consumer technologies such as mobile phones and videogames. We’ve blurred the lines between info-tainment, promo-tainment, and edu-tainment, and now it’s hard to separate intrapersonal, interpersonal, and mass communication. These changes represent a seismic shift in the way we view communication, and are typically referred to as “Convergence”（”media” is implied）.
This presents data from a study of news production and the impact of media
convergence on the practices of journalists. Although journalism and the production
of news have been widely analysed discussions about the impact of new technologies
and new systems of working have commonly been conducted from a distance.
Sociological perspectives on news production have provided frameworks to help us comprehend the complexities of cultural production and the constraints encountered by journalists and their impact on the final product of news, but in contemporary studies of journalism the voices of journalists are surprisingly seldom heard.