Media Convergence

Media Convergence! 

Compare to our good old days, we used phone to call, use gameboy to plays games, use TV to watch drama, use radio to listens songs and more. We need many different gadgets to do many things. We can't multitask by only using one gadget. The changes of our society has boost up our demand on entertainment and getting information. This is why media convergence happened.


Media convergence is more than simply a technological shift.
(Henry Jenkins)


From what I have understand from this statement, it is basically means media convergence is the changes of old media to new media. New era has brought a big changes to the media. Media started to co-operate with each other to create a new media to provides people more functions. Let's take mobile phone as an example. We used mobile phones to make calls and sending short messages, but now, people used mobile phone to check on social networking sites, play games, sending e-mails, taking pictures with adding different effects and so on. This is what we call media convergence.


Media convergence has brought a big impact to the society. Why do I say so? Firstly, I think media convergence helps people a lot in their career. People now can access to Internet through mobile phone or Ipad to reply e-mails from clients or bosses. They do not need to go back to their office for just finding a important file, but only by checking through their database in their laptop or even their e-mails. Compare to old generation, people can only check information of company by checking files or hand-written form of documents which store in their office. Now, people can check it any time, any place. Media convergence brings big convenience to employers and employees.


Secondly, I personally think Media convergence has give entertainment to lifeless people. Before I explained why, please let me define lifeless people. I think lifeless people is like students, employers or employees, housewives and more. Their life is full of works and they have less entertainments compare to others do. With Media convergence, they can multitasks. For example like housewives, they can play with their smart phones while waiting calls from children; students can go on social networking sites (SNS) to socialize with friends and play games in SNS while researching on assignments. Thanks to media convergence, people now can multitasks with just using one media which is something convenient and it saved the buying cost of a few technology gadgets for different purpose.


'Convergence is also a risk for creative industries because it requires media companies to rethink old assumptions about what it means to consume media', said Henry Jenkins. Old consumers always prefer to use traditional media on getting information or other uses. The traditional media including newspaper, TV, radio, which do not provide several functions in one media. It has became a habit for old consumers to look for information by different media. However, new consumers are more prefer to do things conveniently. New consumers now use only one media to access anything. For example, people now can use iPhone to call, sending short messages, checking emails, playing games and more. This is what I mean convenient. People can multitask by using only one media. 


"This next generation audience research focuses attention on what consumers do with media content, seeing each subsequent interaction as valuable because it reinforces their relationship to the series and, potentially, its sponsors." (Henry Jenkins) In the future, consumers might have different views towards media. Audiences research on how consumers use media in the future. Then producers can only predict and understand what kind of media they should use to fit in with future audiences' behavior of using media to get media contents. Producer now may hardly predict consumers' thinking or the behavior of using media because consumers now are more concern about the feel of using media but not the usage or function of the media. To send information to new consumers, producers have to be really understand to the consumers so they can choose which media to convey the message to the consumers. 


In a nutshell, media convergence has changed people's life. It has brings convenience to the society and new consumers are more prefer media convergence than traditional media. However, there are still some old consumers are still prefer and support old media. To target old and new media, producers need to do a lot of research on audiences and research on what are the best media to target them.