Media convergence and emerging trends

The essentials

Media convergence is the coming together of previously separate media technologies, industries and content through digitisation. A smartphone, for example, combines telephone, camera, radio, television, newspaper, music player and computer in one device. Convergence is changing how media are produced, distributed and consumed.

Key points

• Technological convergence: one device or network handles many media functions (a smartphone or smart TV).
• Economic or ownership convergence: one company owns newspapers, TV channels, radio stations and websites together.
• Content convergence: the same story is shared across print, TV, web and social media, often in different formats.
• Newsroom convergence: journalists produce content for several platforms at once; they are expected to have multimedia skills (writing, photography, video, editing).
• Emerging trends: mobile journalism (MoJo), OTT streaming, podcasts, data journalism, live streaming, short videos, personalised news feeds driven by algorithms, and the growing use of artificial intelligence in content creation.
• Fact-checking organisations have grown to counter misinformation.
• Challenges: concentration of ownership, job changes for media workers, and privacy concerns from data collection.

Exam tips

Be able to classify an example as technological, economic or content convergence. Know a few emerging trends and one benefit and one challenge of each.

Common mistakes

Convergence is not only about gadgets; ownership and content can converge too. A media group owning many outlets is also an example of convergence.