Convergence Culture

According to Jenkins (2006), convergence is "the flow of content across many media platforms" (p. 2). Additionally, "convergence does not occur through media appliances, however sophisticated they become. Convergence occurs within the brains of individual consumers and through their social interactions with others. Each of us constructs our own personal mythology from bits and fragments of information extracted from the media flow and transformed [(p. 3)] into resources through which me make sense of our everyday lives" (p. 4). It happens "when people take media in their own hands" (p. 17).

Ithiel de Sola Pool was the first person to lay out this idea in his 1983 book Technologies of Freedom (p. 10).

It is both a corporate, top-down and a "bottom-up consumer-driven process" (p.18).

"Convergence represents a paradigm shift --a move from medium-specific content toward content that flows across multiple channels, toward the increased independence of communication systems" (p. 254).

References:

Jenkins, H. (2006). Convergence culture: Where old and new media collide. New York: New York University Press.