Digital Universe: The Global Telecommunication Revolution

8

Digital Media Convergence

Convergence

Pavlik and McIntosh define convergence as “the coming together of computing, telecommunications, and media in a digital environment.” They state that convergence has effects in four key areas:¹

• The content of communication
• The relationships between media organizations and their publics
• The structure of communication organizations
• How communication professionals do their work

Several of these points are illustrated in Figure 8.1. It is a rare journalist today who carries only a notepad on an assignment. The photo of CNN journalist Phillip Littleton shows him editing a video segment in a hotel room on location in 2007 with Anderson Cooper's AC360 program in Brazil. Field video is downloaded from the camera to a laptop computer, where each shot is trimmed and then organized in a linear timeline with a soundtrack. Once the story is edited, it is either sent electronically to CNN or inserted into a live shot of Anderson Cooper from a satellite truck. The journalist or a producer would then rewrite the story for posting on CNN's website. Before bedtime the journalist might be expected to post a daily entry as a blog on a site dedicated to a newscast or cable news program. To perform this multimedia hat trick,² a journalist must be a reporter, a videographer to shoot the needed footage, a video editor to cut the footage into a 90-second story, ...