Past ---> Future. The convergence of media.

 

It's not very hard to understand the media convergence. If you not very sure, you can try to check out the picture above. Still remember when you used cable telephone at the past old days and now how long that you willing to put down your phone and leave it without you? Well, I guess you have the answer.

Now in this digital era, telephone maybe just used in the office. Nowadays, what people are prefer having a smart phone. I think this is because it makes you feel smart cause it really sounded quite smart, isn't? What can I said is that the purpose of using the phone. Life that we live at the past is different with what happen in our life now. Our lifestyle had changed now as the advanced of the technology nowadays had make our life more easier. 

Let's define media convergence again. According to Distinct Studio Blogs, media convergence is the merging of mass communication outlet. It allows the media professional to tell stories and present information and entertainment using variety of media. Media convergence not only provide a new way for media professional as well as consumer because they can choose the level of the interactivity while self-directing the media content delivery.  


Newspaper, the fundamental materials that had stayed in our routine life for a long time had a significantly changes. It had shift from the paper to the Internet. B & W to colorful. Flipping to clicking. It may sound so ridiculous that paper newspaper may be a history in the human life, but it happened unintentionally because everyone are shifting to the Internet. Even though you want to read a book, e-book may be your choice but the real book. 


Compare to the old days, the users now can be said have more freedom in choosing what content they want to be perceived. Even more, the users can produce their content and upload to the media platform. Have you faced when you can't watch the hit movies such as Harry Potter because there were so many peoples book it and there were no tickets left? Don't worry, you can go online and download it. Isn't amazing? We are no longer to wait for the contents to come to us, but rather we go find what content we want. The terms for this types of users we called it "Prosumer" which is we are the consumer, participant, collaborator, producer and also the users of the media.

"Convergence refer to a process, but not an endpoint." ---Henry.J 2004.As the technology are keep improving, media are everywhere now. With the Internet access, we can go everywhere we want just using a smart phone. 

Just a phone with all the apps that can helps you in everything! 

  

Don't panic if you are forgetting your anniversary, flowers, lost on track, or even how to create a romantic environment...just browse through the smart phone and it will take care of you! Smart phones now had evolved to a mini compass, entertainment, business,videos, photograph...Everything you want is all at here! It's all in one! 

Jenkins had pointed out that this media convergence culture will be uneven or imbalance in the culture as someone had the wealth and times to learn the new things. It's like the comparison between the youngster generations and the older generations. 

Blog is the example that derive from the media convergence. It can helps on sharing, discussion, get the latest news with the unfiltered content with the insertion of the pictures and videos.Below are the example of the blog website which is blogger, Tumblr and Wordpress.

What we can see that is we are no longer write diary on the books but rather share our daily routine life in the blog. The old media delivery had been replaced. For examples, floppy disk, cassette tape,vinyl. We can see that they are no long exist in our life anymore. 

What I think about the media convergence had been widely use and disseminate so fast is because the human demands are exceeding what they can afford. Peoples are taking advantage of the convenience that the advance technology or software can bring to them. They use the application to fulfill their desire. 

The convergence also had created risk to the creative industry. The term cultural industries refers to industries which combine the creation,production and commercialization of creative contents which are intangible and cultural in nature.The risk is that the new media have to rethink the old media consumption. What is the consumption of the old media before they shift to the new media delivery? 

In the journal title of "The Cultural Logic of Media convergence" by Jenkins.H had discussed about 9 points of negotiations between the producers and the consumers which are: 

Revising Audience's measurement

This had to see how the people view the content and media and how they willing connect the media content with themselves. For example, fans had become a trend of the idol they like it and the author had wonder will the fans communities become the new audience measurement? Because this will cause the other community being marginalized. 

Regulating Media Content

Content always had been the controversy issues that raised among the parents and the media. When the media try to applied the concept of self-regulate, they also want to broaden the content into diversity which is appropriate for every member in the family.But sometimes, it just can't be accepted. And would the content being restricted next time they want to try the other ways to broaden their content?

Redesigning the digital economy 

No doubt that when you want to publish a book, internet is your choice because of the low production cost. People who are interested can just use the subscription to read through the books they want. Same to the music, you can choose to listen the music from the iTunes and subscribe it.

Restricting media ownership

FCC (Federal Communication Commission) had come out with the law of the restricting the media ownership among the media company. This had make a worried of the future of media consolidation among the media industry such as Sony company had not only owns film studios but also music recording as well as electronic goods. 

Rethinking media aesthetics

  

When study the impact of the economics that had brought by the media convergence, we also have to look into the perspective of aesthetics. Take an example, Harry Potter had been transform from books to the movies. Same goes to Twilight. This had been a trend among the media as they will use the same materials but slightly different and make a new version of it. Will this practice make more diversity of culture or just the copy machine? 

Redefining Intellectual Property Rights 

Arts are belong to everyone. Everyone have to right to participants in producing the arts. But what happen is that when the arts had been controls by the government, religions community or even media company, will the arts still have the freedom to be participated by everyone? 

Renegotiating Relations Between Producers and Consumers

The authors had explained the two examples which are the recording industry and game industry. In the recording industry, the media company had choose to take legal actions to the  emergence of peer-to-peer technology rather than comes out with the new plans and also rebuilding the relationship with the consumer. Compare to recording industry, games industry had take other route which they will takes some opinions from the fans community rather than shutting down just because there are so many illegal games. They may always reconstruct the content of the games which may differ with the other games. 

Remapping Globalization 

What comes to your mind when you are given the word "Globalization"? Is it the Western culture comes to your mind? Well, many previous academic research had always start with that points. Western culture to the global market. Western country is monopoly the market. But have you wonder where is the place that Super Mario born? The answer is Japan. When is first KungFu showed come from? Bruce Lee or maybe Jackie Chan. They are all from Asian countries. Recently, they was a new trend which is the Korean wave, also known as K-Pop. It's not only created a fashion in Asian, but also to the Western country. But have you even wonder how long will this trend to sustain with the support of the fans and also the immigrant communities? 

Re-engaging Citizens

Citizens may be portrayed as a passive, incoherent, and disengaged among the media. For re-engaging citizens, they are engaging in political field. When the artists or media company had portrayed some sensitive contents in their opinions, their reputation may just dropped with the sales or even the names.

At the end, media convergence are more like the combination of all the information that we wanted but is with the new platform. What we can do is try to expand and discovers more things that we interested. To make the diversity of culture with the economics impact to the society. 

Based on the reading of Henry Jenkins: "The Cultural Logic of Media Convergence".

  

Thank you for reading & wish you have a good day!

Theft or photostate machine,,,which are you in?

I think there were many blur area between plagiarism and piracy but well they had distinction too. After I read through week 5 journal:" On the Web, plagiarism matters more than copyright piracy." I had realize that how serious was the issues and we are actually performing the acts in our life.

Well, it's very not hard to see that pirate CD in Malaysia especially Penang. I remember that stall at the road side which had gain my attraction was the pirate stalls. The stalls had been covered and is quite hidden. The tourists will go into the stalls and starts to choose what show or movie they want. There were really a lot of pirates with different show and movie. When you went inside, there had the a card that hang on the front of the table for the segmentation. Pirates always seem to be a good business. Low cost production but high payback.

This issue had been covered by BBC NEWS that authority in Malaysia had faced a big problem of piracy as 70% of piracy had been made illegally in this country. According to the articles, it had stated that there were two billion pirated music CDs are sold every year, according to figures from the recording industry and the major record labels and film studios are increasingly worried about the impact of piracy on their business.--BBC NEWS, 2002 Malaysia faces CD piracy fight.

I guess this is why piracy had been so furious in the recent 10 years in the industry especially in the music industry. As times changes, majority of people are not longer listen to CD.  Everything had shift to the internet which had been the problem for the artist and the music company but the public are taking advantage on it. 

                           

What's your feeling if you're the artist above? Think about it. 

Looking back to the issues, piracy had become main problem that had been gain so much attention from many industries. But as the technology are getting advanced so much, there was another problem or issues that had arisen which people had ignore it for a long time which is plagiarism. Same goes to the piracy, but piracy is the infringement of the copyright while plagiarism is the failure to give credit.  

Users may not realized that they were performing this act in their life. But what we always do when we gonna use other resources, we tend to copy and paste the content but we forget to do the most important things which is the authors receives no credit. Well, in my opinions, I totally agree with the author that plagiarism may not caused a harm to the author itself but rather the reader itself. Readers are exposed to the false data and information which plagiarism presenting a misleading claims or hidden provenance. 

Looks familiar with the figure above? Watch out! You may unintentionally developed the practices of plagiarism. This is an important issues that we had to take the action especially in the academic field. It's very important for the tracing back of the scholarly articles when comes to a published work. I think that plagiarism had to be heighten in this century, especially the youngster generation. The "Cltr+C & Cltr+V" had become the fashion or a trend that most of the students followed. There was the reason why this trend had started. The shifting of information from the hard copy to the digital format. We are no longer flipping through the stack of books just to found the few sentences. Things had changed now, we are now just Google it and all the information we want were there.

At the last lecture, I had started to contact with the creative commons which is the nonprofit organization that develops, supports, and stewards legal and technical infrastructure that maximizes digital creativity, sharing, and innovation. The vision of it is to realizing the full potential of the internet—universal access to research, education, full participation in culture, and driving a new era of development, growth, and productivity which I think is really good. This had at least, promoting the importance of giving the credit to the fine work that produced so hard from the authors. You can find more here!   

In the article of John W.Snapper, he had stated the term of "fair use" for the issues of piracy. According to the Standford University Library, fair use is defined as any copying of copyrighted material done for a limited and “transformative” purpose, such as to comment upon, criticize, or parody a copyrighted work. Such uses can be done without permission from the copyright owner. This practice had been falls into these two categories which are commentary and critiques and also parody. 

Commentary and critiques, for example, a review.  Review about songs, music, movie or even books. This all can be done in the fair use in the reproduce purpose. For parody, fairly extensive use of the original work is permitted in a parody in order to “conjure up” the original. For more, you can click Standford University Library. 

Thinking time!! 

From the issues that had carried out by Snappers, it really must gain an attention from everyone which is not about crediting but also appreciate the works that had worked so hard by the authors. But, at the end, when every pieces of information can be found in the Web, will we still take our time to trace back the work and cited the author? What's more is that will we still learn how to appreciate others people work? Will we lost the ability of the acknowledgment and just do a photocopy machine? Take your time and think about it :) Have a nice day!