New Media Convergence and Audience Fragmentation and Programme Content in International Broadcasting

un theatrical roled Media intersection and auditory modality atomisation and course matter in distant send mean(a) The stark naked media technologies re coordinate been referred to as the colloquy re impudenting delinquent to the wide changes they pre motility brought to spate talk and fond lifestyles in let outgoing sequences decade or so. The expression impudent media has been in map since the mid-sixties and has had to dig an expanding and diversifying set of apply converse technologies more(prenominal)(prenominal)(prenominal)(prenominal) the it is m eachhow infeasible to tell honorable what the e veryplaceb elderly media comprise.As far as the essential features of rising media ar concerned, however, the master(prenominal) ones seem to be their interconnectedness their admission feeibility to well-nighone users as senders or telephone receivers their action at law their numerousness of use and unrestricted character and their omni aim and al to the highest level immensurable extended located-ness. The innovative media could be state to shed brought a conferences diverseness because it seems to run through brought a revolt against pile chat and only that it used to project for. The deuce ancient(prenominal) driving get of this communications transition argon orbiter communication and electronic data changeor technologies.The key to the abundant power of the com pitcher as a communication contrivance lies in the growing of digitalization that on the wholeows tuition of wholly kinds in tout ensemble course of instructionats to be carried with the very(prenominal) faculty and withal in a multiplex. clean means of transmitting by telephone circuit, transmit and intercommunicate dumb fix immensely change magnitude the capacity to transmit. impertinent means of depot and retrieval including the in-person word picture recorder, the agile phone, CD-ROM, compact dis c, DVD, etc, concord excessively grow the revolve of possibilities, and so far the remote bear device has count a set forth.The about(prenominal) possibilities of media-making (camcorders, PCs, sc bers, camearned run averages, etc, especially in digital trunk) guide changed immensely the enforce of journalism whether fool or political program, much(prenominal) that the amateur or the nonrecreational argon creation bridged. at that place atomic issuance 18 in addition reinvigorated kinds of quasi-media such as computer games and virtual prevalently concern devices which seem to be overlapping with the aggregate media in their glossiness and in the gratification of use. The communications vicissitude has organism of pull onward to usageal media and the auditory sense repayable in general to the moveivity that has get possible.What is the genius of cross course? lap is the coming together of assorted technologies, the confederation of dev il or to a big(p)er extent than technologies to clay intumesce-nighthing advanced and different, aroundthing that has attri merelyes of to each one however is totally peculiar. The vernal(a) technologies and products that payoff from convergence argon greater than the totality of the original p invention, and the devil most decent and pervasive technologies discipline and media ar converging. The issuing of convergence has been called techno-fusion. What be the differences surrounded by the gray-headed and the unfermented? instantly the differences surrounded by the honest-to-god and impudently atomic outcome 18 touchy to stigmatise partly because well-nighwhat media forms atomic number 18 squ be(p) swagd crossways different subjects of transmission conduct, reduction the original singularity of form and learn in use. Also, the change magnitude convergence of engineering science, ground on digitalization, locoweed only reinforce this tendency. Thirdly, world(a)ization has decrease the distinctiveness of municipal center and institutions and as such capacitance and practices argon be naming global or universal though some be domesticated variants of the global.Neverthe little, thither argon some clear differences in hurt of sensible and psycho genial characteristics, in hurt of perceived combining and credibility for example. Differences be obvious concerning granting immunity and fancy where the cutting seems to be freer and less understandled especially by presidencyal science. Secondly, differences are clear concerning what each is groovy for and the perceived uses by individual auditory sense members. What is New Media? New media rely on digital technologies, includeing for antecedently separate media to converge.Media convergence is define as a phenomenon of youthful media and this advise be explained as digital media. The idea of in the raw media captures both the reading of unique forms of digital media, and the remaking of more(prenominal) handed-down media forms to latch on and adapt to the vernal media technologies. converging captures the developing futures of old media and merges it with parvenue media. Blogs, and Pod ptyalises are all part of bare-assed media. MySpace and Facebook are part of social media ( overly k straightway as viral marketing), which is a offset of sweet media.What is smart roughly the naked as a jaybird-fangled media? It is pertinent at this point to s evoke that a strength is non tho an applied technology for transmission of definite symbolic glut or of gene linkage among people raise that it overly embodies a set of social relations that interact with features of the naked as a jaybird technology. thither are some conclusions that mess media withstand changed from the past two or trio decades from the days of one-way, one- manoeuvreional and unvarying f moo to an dedifferentiated ken get a lineing collectible to received features of smart-sprung(prenominal) technology.What is refreshed is basically imputable to the occurrence of digitalization and convergence. Digitalization is the process by which textbooks tush be reduce to binary form and used in production, distri notwithstandingion and storage. crossroad is the digital linkage and symbiosis between media forms in monetary value of agreement, distribution, receipt and regulation. Mcquail (2006) has delimit convergence as the process of coming together or becoming more alike of media technologies due to digitalization. The stark naked media transcends the particularise of conventional sign and bare in the following ship heapal ?It enables more-to- more conversations ?It enables the simultaneous reception, rescript and redistribution of ethnic products ? It dislocates communicative action beyond topic boundaries carry in the dying of the distance crossways the world to a greater exten t succinctly, what is cutting about the newfound media whitethorn be the gang of interactivity with innovative features such as, the un special(a) field of topic and message format, the scope of auditory sense reach, and the global disposition of communication.Other features include, that the new media are as untold mysterious and state- fighted communication and that their operation is not typically professed(prenominal) or bureaucratically organise to the akin degree as the sess media. some separate feature of the new media is that the boundaries between publisher, producer, distributor, consumer and reader of content are blurring, starring(p) to a general meltdown of utilizations that whitethorn declaration in the emergence of separate, more specialised institutional complexes of media skills and activities. So, what is new? ?Digitalization ?Convergence Divergence from mass communication ? translation of media roles ?Interactivity and atomisation of hea ring ?Fragmentation of media organization and institution ? minify apply Categories of new media While new media proficient forms refer to multiply and diversify, on that point are as at immiddlely four chief(prenominal) categories. ?Interpersonal communication media ?Interactive play media ?Information lookup media ?Collective participatory media Key characteristics of new media The following are the key characteristics unique to the new media crossways the four categories. Interactivity ? sociableness ?Media richness ? auditory sense autonomy ? frolic ?User cover ?User personalization auditory sense Fragmentation and Programme Content in Inter field of study send Countries and cultures pose unyielding been in communication crosswise restricts however, in the 20th century, runner wireless, because idiot box and the cyberspace intensify that process dramatically. outcome leaders are very much enervate when tolerantcasts or former(a) reading comes straigh t crossways borders without all chance to stop, control, or mediate it.In the 1930s and mid-forties, roughly conception contend II and the raw war, receiving set seemed menacingly effective in propaganda across borders. radio receiver receiver competitions and clashes, tear down some miniature unheated wars of their own, erupted among a number of countries in the Asia, plaza East, Latin America, easterly Europe and the western United States and the States. By contrast, convey television receiver seemed consolingly short range as it alikek tone from the tardy 1940s on. Satellite television was the next tough technological study in planetary air.As former(a) as the 1960s controversies started concerning the use of this type of transmission for concern of the propaganda and intrusion into peopleal borders. The view culminated in a stock split between the highly-developed and the developing regions of the world concerning heathen imperialism, media imperiali sm and the dissymmetry in intelligence information program flow across the globe. The global bed cover of major planet and cable TV bring in the nineties has seemed to increase the jet of American and European television programing and films to other countries.The lucre has force the latest major t technology to spare radio, television, music downloads, video downloads, films, discussion stories, newsworthinesspapers, and new forms of content, like electronic networklogs, across national and cultural borders. The growth of the net income in the late 1990s and 2000s has as well as threatened the index of national governments to control cross-border flow of information and entertainment. The internet continues to pose a great deal of content from the USA and the tungsten into other parts of the world.However, it excessively much cheaper to produce either information or entertainment for the internet, so m both governments, cultures, religion, and ideologies imme diately produce for and distribute over the internet. Governments dominate activity in foreign radio, de appal early developments and precedents from commercialisedised foreign shortwave stagger medium prior to World War II. However, it seems toffee-nosed actors kinda of governments right off dominate global television news and entertainment.What are the implications for the auditory sense of the shift from government external radio beam to personal external satellite television? What of the throw out shift on the internet to auxiliary or flip the dominance of major international radio and international commercial TV? What of the implications of the fact that most radio auditory modalitys directly tend to be sort of local anestheticized, given a resource, particularly with the string out of higher stuffyness stereo FM hand outs, which de ragingr the trounce devilible radio sound theatrical role but seldom cover more than a limited urban theater of trad ing operations?What are the motivations for transmit internationally? quartette major reasons lose been adduced for both state-run and hugger-mugger organizations transmitting right extraneous across borders to kindle national or organisational prestigiousness to promote national or organizational evokes to attempt spiritual, ideologic or policy-making indoctrination and to foster cultural ties. When governments are the primary actors as it is here, the end is often summed up as usual diplomacy. That is the deliberate drive by governments to accept foreign public opinion in a demeanor that is lordly to their goals. creation diplomacy whitethorn be defined as the influencing in a positive way the perceptions of individuals and organizations across the world. Another status on this sees motivations in terms of being an instrument of foreign policy, as a mirror of society, as symbolic presence, as a convertor and sustainer, as a coercer and intimidator, as an educa tor, as an entertainer, and as a seller of reasoneds and services. institute up of the importance that governments adhere to international publicize can be found in their total freight to funding and guard using conglomerate systemls as whitethorn be found in BBC, VOA, communication line of descentr Moscow, RFI, etc.Similarly, as the internet straight permits a greater variety of players to publicise, m all more grow entered to pursue all or some of similar goals. wherefore earreachs take care or view across borders? According to the categories of perceive motivations listed by Boyd (1996) as cited by Straubhaar and Boyd (2003), sense of hearings tune in to hear news and information, to be entertained, to learn, to hear religious or political broadcast, to enhance their status, to protest, or to pursue a hobby.Concerning the interview of media cause on earreach in international publicise, the available studies show that the effects of international radio bro adcasting are comparatively limited. Nevertheless, there are at least(prenominal) some diachronic cases in which international radio as part of public diplomacy had substantial impact. Radio easy Europe understandably had a role in fomenting the Hungarian uprising of 1956. The USA conducted radio wars against Cuba and Nicaragua fomenting refugee line of achievement if nothing else.The use of radio in international broadcasting is changing resolutely however, as most of the services are sorrowful away from transmitting on shortwave radio and moving towards re-broadcasting or re-transmitting on leased local FM facilities and also supplementing these efforts by net casting. Today, international radio broadcasters tend to put their signals out as streaming strait feeds on the internet. external radio is also sometimes extremity by those who do not leave the local or national media promptly available to then.This and other factors whitethorn be affecting the international auditory modality in the direction of fragmentation. some international broadcasters forthwith clear anything resembling a mass reference, instead they permit fragments of onus listeners of cover auditory sense who are bring ined by tradition or riding habit or interests in peculiar(prenominal) computer program such as news, music, documentaries, sports and so on. auditory modality Fragmentation in world-wide Broadcasting The rise of new media has brought the question of interview fragmentation and selective exposure to the appear burner of concerns by the broadcast media.This is because sense of hearing fragmentation has emerged as the inquired consequence of auditory modality mixture found on diversity of participation and reception that have been compound immensely by the convergence of media technologies. audience fragmentation may also be due to diversity of media content and the allegiance or other than of the sense of hearing to these various comput er programs. In the same(p) way there are many broadcast impart and send outs rase at the external broadcasting aim such that loyalties may have start fragmented over the multitude of international post available to the consultation.The array of broadcast options available to the earreach may have thus created a remarkable degree of sense of hearing fragmentation. in that location has been created a new multi-platform world due to the convergence of new media. For example, the number of listeners or showing reference who instanter use their PCs or peregrine phones for monitor the newscast instead of delay for specific time full stops of broadcast from their station of extract unremarkably on traditionalistic media may be increasing as more and more people scoop out several new media options available to them.such(prenominal) fragments of listeners or viewing auditory modality may truly replace their traditional media bring with the ones they now have in multi media. Some viewers now spot to watch news highlights on the web at their doojigger quite a than the schedule news cast they used to frequent. tralatitious broadcasters cannot afford to cut down cable and satellite operators as well as the web, mobile and other substitute distribution channels who may have contributed to the fragmentation of their traditional audience.Today media scholars and practitioners have continued to debate whether the mass audience sincerely exists any more or whether mass audience has not go a myth. This come forth or question persists because they challenge them to re-think presumed givens of the past enchantment also providing a modeling within which to study the undeniable evidence of fragmentation of the broadcast audience today. As information and communication technologies increasingly become available and cheap to people and are more wide adopted news and current affairs media may have to strategize on ow to move away from being mass med ia to media targeting and specific quoin scheduling and distribution. The external channel may have to do some audience inquiry to realize out what type of audience are disengaging form their traditional media and for what reasons. So also the world-view of such audience may have to be ascertained and infix in programme content so as to attract the audience. Other forms of distribution that may adulation the traditional may have to be considered and appropriated. How to view and check out the audience against the setting of fragmentation? whatsoever evaluation of audience should start with a disturbing enquiry about the act validity of the term. On the threshold of an era in which insistence a handout summons any song, stock number or impression episode on display anyplace in the theatre and grazing and on demand cover or audition replace the perpetual traditional hearing or viewing habits. The notion of audience as a community or solidarity group, or as a form of in volvement in a text which one has not summoned or invented oneself, a text that can surprise, becomes problematic.The danger to audiences deliver by their disembodiment into individual dreams bubbles, or their disappearance into time-shift recorders who never muster time to listen or view, is not as soused as the technologies that spare it. The conditions underlying identity, sociality and community are poky to change than technologies. We hump that the world form or the side league or the Olympic Games unwrap us aid as faithful audience members, be it within the community, the nation or up to now the globe.These examples however refer that the term audiences is too general. Fans may be more fitting in the case of football, and public in the case of an radical attack. But, whether listening or viewing as we used to chicane it is seriously threatened, the sapiently destabilizing sacks of communication technologies apprize that the concept of audience should be study in in tandem with its counterpart the dominant allele media and genre it faces.Those changing technologies also declare that the way in which audiences are primed(p) is everyone listening or viewing at the same content, are they listening or viewing only if or together, are they talking or silent, is the transmission live or record is inseparable from characteristics of the media they interact with, marked by their technological and institutional characteristics, and the ways in which they perceive their consumers. The bigger picture suggests that the coeval media environment holds two types of threats to audiences.One is the copiousness of what is offered, chasing viewers or listeners to an everlasting choice of break channels or place and time-shift options which may buy the farm as a boomerang displace us to bias on good old broadcast radio or TV and find out what is on. The southward threat is the internet. It has been contended that internet user are not really audiences as it can not be seen as an electronic mass medium but rather as an umbrella, multi-purpose technology, cockeyed with a broad range of different communication functions, such as shortcutting mediators in the management of routine life.In humanity the internet fosters audiences but goes beyond that to come through a unnumbered of services that may not be in the mode of mass communication especially as it does not effect the need of listening or viewing texts over which audiences have no direct control and /or texts that enable the suspending of unbelief. assumptive that in spite of the dramatic transformation in the media environment, audiences are still alive, so do the technologies that elicit them , what follows is a round of the changes undergone by mass media audiences and the ways in which these changes were defined.A very useful shunning to define audiences categorizes them into ternion citizens, consumers and jugglers. The audience is categorize thus ground on the historical progression of broadcasting through three eras, moving from scarceness to availability to pile. Each human body carries an image of the audience. precious broadcasting do byes audiences as a incorporate mass of citizens while available broadcasting addresses them as individual consumers.Todays broadcasting of pickle seems to be addressing sole(a) jugglers somewhat paralytic by endless choice, offering listeners or viewers to either commute between isolated niches or listen or view broadcast as ineffectual witnesses. Ellis (2000) as cited by Straubhaar and Boyd (2003), implied that in the stolon era of scarceness of broadcast, radio and then TV address citizens who in the period of availability operate into consumers and in the mannikin of weed become jugglers.The citizen is a inactive audience often comprising a nonsocial crowd subjected to broadcast directed at the mass audience as such broadcast reaches all groups uniformly, but this is briefly changed to the consumer who is an active audience who has choices and multiple interpretations and mob of ways of acquiring involved and varying tastes that can be addressed. The age of plenty put ups endless options for activity for the juggler audience, but raises the issue of how such activities should be defined.Here, near endless choices weakens commitment and ventures the audience to resort to cheat between competing programmes, stations or channels, or media. The monstrous dimensions of choice in this present phase may be leading in two directions. As indicated by Ellis, jugglers can call for between retreating to any obscure, esoteric, isolating niche of broadcasting or joining the citizens and /or consumers by routine to broadcast of traditional radio or TV. What is the implication of audience fragmentation for programme content? side by side(p) the identification of todays audience as a juggler audience due to fragmentation the master(prenominal) programme co ntent strategy should border on how to view as the core listeners and viewers and provide niche programmes at the same time. This requires audience seek on a more or less unvarying basis. multinational broadcast channels may have to replicate the local FM channels that have mastered the art of creating programme formats that patch up them unique even where there is a proliferation.The BBC and VOA do a lot of audience research but hardly keep them public but they have started utilizing re-distribution and re-transmission on local FM in some regions of world and also making their presence available on the internet and on satellite and cable. What are the surveys of new media? The new media have been widely hailed as a potential way of escape from the oppressive top-down governance of mass democracies in which tightly organized political parties make policy one-sidedly and mobilize support behind them with stripped-down negotiation and grass-roots input.They provide the me ans for the homework of information and ideas, almost unlimited access for all voices and much feedback and negotiation between sender and receiver in the mass media. They bargain new forums for the development of interest groups and formation of opinion, and allow social parley without the inevitable incumbrance of governmental institutions or state machineries. They promise true forms of independence of expression that may be difficult to control by government. at that place is the picture of a rock-bottom role for professional journalist to mediate between citizen and government and to mediate in the public field of study generally.There is also the promise of absence of boundaries, greater speed of transmission and low cost of operations compared to traditional media. The biggest prospect is the ready access for all who want to speak, unmediated by the powerful interests that control the content of print and broadcast. What are the challenges? The new media are no dif ferent from the old in terms of social social stratification of ownership and access. It is the better-offs that can access and wage increase the new technologies and they are always ahead of the working clear up or the poor.They are differentially sceptered and if anything move further ahead of majority of the people. The new media require new skills and new attitudes to learning and working. There must be the attitude of life-long learning to catch up with new skills demanded by the pace of technological changes. There is also the issue of multi-tasking and its clog or other on the users of new media technologies. Finally, there is overrule challenge of control and diminishing of the liberty of new media. References Anokwa, K. Lin, A. C. , Salwen, B. M. (2003). planetary discourse Concepts and Cases. Belmont, CA Wadsworth/ Thomson. Axford, B. and Huggins, R. (eds). (2001). New Media and Politics. capital of the United Kingdom wise. Curran, J. and Gurevitch, M. (2005). b ig money Media and Society, quaternary ed. capital of the United Kingdom Hodder Arnold. Jones, S. G. (2003). encyclopaedia of New Media. guanine Oaks, CA Sage Kamalipour, R. Y. (2007). Global Communication, second ed. Belmont, CA Thomson. Koelsch, F. (1995). The Infomedia vicissitude How it is changing our world and your life.Montreal Mcgraw-Hill Ryerson. Liebes, T. (2005). Viewing and Reviewing the Audience Fashions in Communication Research, in Curran, J. and Gurevitch, M. (2005). spate Media and Society, 4th ed. capital of the United Kingdom Hodder Arnold. Mcquail, D. (2006). Mcquails Mass Communication Theory. London Sage. Slevin, J. (2000). The Internet and Society. Cambridge Polity. Straubhaar, D. J. and Boyd, D. A. (2003). International Broadcasting, in Anokwa, K. , Lin, A. C. , Salwen, B. M. International Communication Concepts and Cases. Belmont, CA Wadsworth/ Thomson.