ARTS1090 Week 6 – Convergence

In her article New Media Worlds? Challenges for Convergence one of Fran Nightingale’s key aims is to present a clear definition of media convergence. She firstly outlines the way convergence “has the capacity to disrupt existing media industries by precipitating deconstruction and disintermediation.”(Nightingale, 2007 p.19) She discusses that traditional media industries central structures are having to be reformulated but they are also having to share their traditional market share with new media forms.
At the same time she asserts “Convergence is understood…as an ongoing process or series of intersections between different media systems, not a fixed relationship.” (Nightingale, 2007 p.20) This is an important distinction that Nightingale makes, essentially convergence happens as multiple media systems coexist, no longer have the set divisions of the past and media content is encouraged to flow fluidly across them. It is the process of this that traditional media forms find the need to adjust.

In defining the terms of deconstruction and disintermediation she draws on the example of the television, which faced a combination of both. Television not only had to dismantle and ‘reformulate’ its traditional business structure, it also faced competition from the Internet and subscription TV. Nightingale asserts that Television not only faced a resegmentation of its audience but a complete transformation. She follows on that in terms of dealing with convergence “A more constructive approach to Internetisation…is evident in the strategic investments television companies are committing to online businesses that compliment the television business.” (Nightingale, 2007 p.25)

I found it interesting that Nightingale asserts early that “it was once assumed that digitisation and convergence would result in a mono-media world.” I know I personally shared the same view. I imagined everyone would have their own personal communication/entertainment/multimedia/super handheld device/thingy and though it might have seemed like it was heading that way, it is clear that the ‘mediascape’ is more complex than ever. As Nightingale states;
“Rather than concentrating media in one device, the current expression of convergence addresses multiple devices, wireless access and continuous connectivity to individually preferred networks of personal and work contacts, and leisure and entertainment resources.”
A long quote but I think it effectively conveys how diverse media is becoming. It also leads me to question how many different media platforms I use everyday. I guess this shows the significance in the current research assignment.

Week 5 ARTS1090 Mobility

I recently had my housemate tell me a story of how she planned to meet her friend for lunch, but had forgotten to take her mobile phone with her. She said she felt a strange feeling of worry and isolation. Despite being early at the arranged time and place, she worried that she had gone to the wrong restaurant, she had got the wrong time or even that something had happened to her friend.

Do we rely on technology more and more or perhaps even more than we need to? Is it beneficial? And how does it change our relationship with others? The readings and the lecture discussed the altered boundaries between our public and private lives.

Ito in Mobile Phones, Japanese Youth, and the Re-placement of Social Contact. Discusses how mobile media alter the traditional spaces of home, school, and urban places but also makes it clear that “this does not necessarily mean that the devices erode the integrity of existing places or social activities.”

From Ito’s studies and interviews, it appears clear that mobile media form more of integration, rather than eroding social boundaries. Rather it melds them and brings them together.

Gillian also discussed the changing of public areas- mobile networks are a form of private communication unlike the mass communication forms of TV or Radio. Due to its private form of communication, there is a ‘social controversy’ seen regarding mobile phones. Individuals ‘intrude’ with the use of ‘phone space’ in public areas.
Ito also addresses this by saying “While mobile phones have become a vehicle for youths to circumvent the power geometries of places such as the home, the classroom and the street, they have also created new disciplines and power geometries, the need to be continuously available to friends and lovers and the need to always carry a functioning mobile device. These disciplines are accompanied by new sets of social expectations and manners.”

The mobile phone as an example conveys how we are no longer tied down by the house phone or even the payphones on the street. Mobile media allows us to be precisely that- mobile. We can be contacted and can contact others, while ‘on-the-go.’
With this there is also an expectation that we will contact and will be able to be contacted by others while on the go.

In the end my housemate met her friend fine, she had worried unnecessarily, but in a sense she had for a short amount of time experienced life before mobile technology.
I guess it just indicates how much we on rely mobile technology and how important it has become part of our day-to-day functioning.
Even when it is just meeting our friends for lunch.

ARTS 1090 Week 4 ‘Space’

From what I’ve learnt so far media ‘mediates’ the space between us and our world. In these terms obviously the notion of this ‘space’ is important. Space is also the main discussion point behind Moores’ argument in this weeks reading The Doubling of Space.
As discussed by Scott in the lecture and as a background, space has an objective, scientific and abstract sense. What I particularly took from this understanding was the notion of a changing space largely due to media perception. Scott put across the example that if we saw a lot of coverage from New Zealand current affairs due to media we may feel closer to them as a country distance and space wise.

Moores builds upon Scannell’s observation in referring to broadcast media that “Public events now occur, simultaneously, in two different places: the place of the event itself and that in which it is watched and heard. Broadcasting mediates between these two points.” And argues that electronic media like the internet and telephone can also be incorporated into this ‘doubling of place’ due to their “… common potential that all these media have constructing experiences of simultaneity, liveness and ‘immediacy’… in spaces and encounters.”

He puts this notion forward to help potentially bridge the gap between the existing notions of ‘mass’ and ‘interpersonal’ communications but to also disperse the notions of the simple production and consumption model.

Even from my own understanding I have heard a lot about how the internet (in particular) is decreasing our notion of ‘place.’ That it is eliminating our own personal space, that we are just one global space without anything special or different about our own ‘space’. Moores however puts forward – “Why not argue that media coverage massively multiplies the interconnections between places, rather than weakening our sense of place.” I can completely agree with Moores statement taking my own personal experience of the internet with something like instant messaging. At one particular instance I could be talking to my friend that I was just in class with, while at the same time talking to my friend in England. So it is as Moores states that as soon as we can accept being in two places at once, like the example of the television’s immediacy that he began with that “ It is necessary for us to recognise that social relationships can be pluralised also.”
Moores ultimate goal in the reading is to indicate the important function of media in shaping our ideas of ‘place’ or space and our ‘being-in-place’ experiences.