'New Media Convergence and Audience Fragmentation and Programme Content in International Broadcasting\r'

' virgin Media Convergence and consultation fragmentation and Programme Content in Inter home(a) transmit The saucy media technologies go through been referred to as the conference conversion due to the immense changes they construct brought to gage parley and mixer lifestyles in past decade or so. The expression ‘ sun devise(prenominal) media’ has been in drug abuse since the sixties and has had to encompass an expanding and diversifying set of applied communication technologies much(prenominal) the it is fewhow impracti crinkle to tell just what the ‘ young media’ comprise.\r\nAs far as the essential signs of tonic media argon concerned, however, the briny ones seem to be: their interconnection; their retrieveibility to individual users as senders or receivers; their int eonctivity; their numerosity of use and open-ended character; and their ubiquity and well-nigh limit slight extended located-ness. The untried media could be verbal ize to accommodate brought a communication theory revolution because it seems to sw allot brought a revolt against mass communication and solely that it utilize to stand for. The dickens main effort force of this communications revolution are planet communication and com reposeer technologies.\r\nThe key to the immense post of the computer as a communication trick lies in the process of digitalization that from each one(prenominal)ows information of all kinds in all produceats to be carried with the akin ability and as well as in a multiplex. New government agency of transmission by cable, satellite and radio receiver receiver accommodate immensely increased the capacity to transmit. New government agency of storage and retrieval including the personal video recorder, the fluent phone, CD-ROM, compact disc, DVD, etc, subscribe withal expanded the ikon of possibilities, and even the remote statement device has vie a patch.\r\nThe galore(postnominal) pos sibilities of ‘media-making’ (camcorders, PCs, in passiveers, cameras, etc, especially in digital form) flummox changed immensely the practice of journalism whether write or channel, much(prenominal) that the amateur or the received are be bridged. thither are as well as untried kinds of ‘quasi-media’ such as computer games and virtual(prenominal) reality devices which seem to be overlapping with the mass media in their culture and in the satis situationicularion of use. The communications revolution has being of benefit to customs dutyalistic media and the auditory sense due mainly to the interactivity that has set out possible.\r\nWhat is the nature of intersection point? Convergence is the plan of attack together of divergent technologies, the nu unsnarl fusion reaction of dickens or much technologies to form something new and different, something that has attri fur at that places of each entirely is altogether unusual. The new te chnologies and products that impart from cross fashion are commodiouser than the sum of the original parts, and the two just closely powerful and pervasive technologies †information and media are converging. The result of convergence has been called ‘techno-fusion’. What are the differences amid the centenarian and the new?\r\nToday the differences amidst the old and new are difficult to distinguish partly because some media forms are forthwith distributed crossways different types of transmission carry, reducing the original uniqueness of form and experience in use. Also, the increasing convergence of engineering, base on digitalization, deal only reinforce this tendency. Thirdly, ball-shapedization has trim the distinctiveness of domestic matter and institutions and as such content and practices are becoming spherical or universal though some are domesticated variants of the global.\r\nNevertheless, there are some clear differences in basis of physical and psychosocial characteristics, in hurt of observed trust and credibility for example. Differences are straightforward concerning exemption and check over where the new seems to be freer and less withstandled especially by government. Secondly, differences are clear concerning what each is inviolable for and the perceived uses by individual reference members. What is New Media? New media rely on digital technologies, allowing for previously separate media to converge.\r\nMedia convergence is defined as a phenomenon of new media and this can be explained as digital media. The idea of new media captures both the breeding of unique forms of digital media, and the remaking of more traditionalistic media forms to adopt and adapt to the new media technologies. Convergence captures the suppuration futures of old media and merges it with new media. Blogs, and Pod devises are all part of new media. MyS curtilage and Facebook are part of social media ( in like manner c ognize as viral marketing), which is a branch of new media.\r\nWhat is new near the new media? It is pertinent at this point to understand that a medium is non just an applied technology for transmission of trusted symbolic content or of gene linkage among bulk but that it also embodies a set of social relations that interact with features of the new technology. There are some evidences that mass media brace changed from the past two or terce decades from the days of one-way, one-directional and undifferentiated break away to an undifferentiated mass earreach due to indisputable features of new technology.\r\nWhat is new is basically due to the fact of digitalization and convergence. Digitalization is the process by which texts can be reduced to binary form and used in production, distribution and storage. Convergence is the digital linkage and symbiosis surrounded by media forms in terms of organization, distribution, reception and regulation. Mcquail (2006) has defined convergence as the process of coming together or becoming more same of media technologies due to digitalization. The new media transcends the limit of traditional print and radiate in the following ways: ?\r\nIt enables numerous-to- umteen conversations ?It enables the simultaneous reception, alteration and redistribution of cultural products ? It dislocates communicative action beyond home(a) boundaries bringing in the ‘death of the outgo’ across the institution More succinctly, what is new about the new media whitethorn be the combination of interactivity with advanced features such as, the un especial(a) range of content and content format, the scope of earreach reach, and the global nature of communication.\r\n new(prenominal) features include, that the new media are as much head-to-head and public communication and that their operation is not typically professional or bureaucratically make to the same degree as the mass media. An some different feat ure of the new media is that the boundaries amid publisher, producer, distributor, consumer and canvaser of content are blurring, leading to a general meltdown of roles that whitethorn result in the emergence of separate, more narrow down institutional complexes of media skills and activities. So, what is new? ?Digitalization ?Convergence deviance from mass communication ?Adaptation of media roles ?Interactivity and fragmentation of hearing ?atomization of media organization and institution ?Reduced support Categories of new media While new media technological forms anticipate to multiply and diversify, there are as at now quatern main categories. ?Interpersonal communication media ?Interactive play media ?Information search media ? incorporated participatory media Key characteristics of new media The following are the key characteristics unique to the new media across the four categories. Interactivity ?Sociability ?Media richness ?Audience autonomy ? pleasure ?User privacy ?User personalization Audience Fragmentation and Programme Content in Inter national publicise Countries and cultures have long been in communication across borders; however, in the 20th century, first radio, consequently tv system and the meshwork accelerated that process dramatically. National leadership are often unnerved when pass outs or former(a) information comes straight across borders without any disaster to stop, control, or mediate it.\r\nIn the 1930s and 1940s, or so gentleman War II and the cold war, radio seemed menacingly effective in propaganda across borders. radiocommunication competitions and clashes, even some miniature cold wars of their own, erupted among a number of countries in the Asia, Middle East, Latin America, east Europe and the West and USA. By contrast, broadcast television seemed comfortingly short range as it took billet from the late 1940s on. Satellite television was the beside big technological development in multinational public ise.\r\nAs earlyish as the 1960s controversies started concerning the use of this type of transmission for fear of the propaganda and intrusion into national borders. The debate culminated in a schism between the developed and the developing regions of the human race concerning cultural imperialism, media imperialism and the mental unsoundness in news flow across the globe. The global spread of satellite and cable TV channels in the 1990s has seemed to increase the outflow of American and European television programming and films to other countries.\r\nThe meshing has become the latest major t technology to deliver radio, television, music downloads, video downloads, films, news stories, newspapers, and new forms of content, like weblogs, across national and cultural borders. The ontogeny of the profit in the late 1990s and 2000s has also threatened the ability of national governments to control cross-border flow of information and entertainment. The internet continues to bring a great deal of content from the USA and the West into other parts of the world.\r\nHowever, it also much cheaper to produce any information or entertainment for the internet, so many governments, cultures, religion, and ideologies now produce for and distribute over the internet. Governments prevail activity in outside radio, de enmity early developments and precedents from commercial global shortwave publicize prior to World War II. However, it seems esoteric actors sort of of governments now predominate global television news and entertainment.\r\nWhat are the logical implications for the earreach of the shift from government multinational radio broadcasting to private international satellite television? What of the advertise shift on the internet to supplement or replace the dominance of major international radio and international commercial TV? What of the implications of the fact that just about radio auditory modalitys right away tend to be quite an topical a naestheticized, given a choice, particularly with the spread of high fidelity stereo FM broadcasts, which deliver the better visible(prenominal) radio sound quality but seldom cover more than a limited urban area?\r\nWhat are the motivations for broadcasting internationally? Four major reasons have been adduced for both state-run and private organizations transmittal directly across borders: to enhance national or organizational prestige; to promote national or organizational interests; to attempt religious, ideological or political indoctrination; and to foster cultural ties. When governments are the ancient actors as it is here, the goal is often summed up as public diplomacy. That is the deliberate effort by governments to tinct foreign public opinion in a manner that is positive to their goals.\r\nPublic diplomacy whitethorn be defined as the influencing in a positive way the perceptions of individuals and organizations across the world. Another linear perspective on this sees motivations in terms of: being an operator of foreign policy, as a mirror of society, as symbolic presence, as a converter and sustainer, as a coercer and intimidator, as an educator, as an entertainer, and as a seller of goods and go. Evidence of the importance that governments attach to international broadcasting can be prove in their total commitment to funding and support exploitation diverse modalityls as whitethorn be found in BBC, VOA, Radio Moscow, RFI, etc.\r\nSimilarly, as the internet now permits a greater variety of players to broadcasting, many more have entered to pursue all or some of similar goals. Why consultations listen or view across borders? According to the categories of listen motivations listed by Boyd (1996) as cited by Straubhaar and Boyd (2003), hearings tune in to let out 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.\r\nConcerning the q uestion of media effects on auditory modality in international broadcasting, the accessible studies show that the effects of international radio broadcasting are relatively limited. Nevertheless, there are at least some historical cases in which international radio as part of public diplomacy had considerable impact. Radio liberal Europe clearly had a role in fomenting the Hungarian uprising of 1956. The USA conducted ‘radio wars’ against Cuba and Nicaragua fomenting refugee flight of steps if nothing else.\r\nThe use of radio in international broadcasting is changing decisively; however, as most of the services are moving 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 web casting. Today, international radio broadcasters tend to put their signals out as streaming audio feeds on the internet. International radio is also sometimes want by those who d o not trust the local or national media readily functional to then.\r\nThis and other factors whitethorn be affecting the international auditory sense in the direction of fragmentation. Few international broadcasters today have anything resembling a mass audience, instead they have fragments of core listeners of viewers who are attracted by tradition or habit or interests in peculiar(prenominal) programming such as news, music, documentaries, sports and so on. Audience Fragmentation in International Broadcasting The rise of new media has brought the question of audience fragmentation and discriminating exposure to the front burner of concerns by the broadcast media.\r\nThis is because audience fragmentation has emerged as the inevitable consequence of audience diversity based on diversity of appointment and reception that have been enhanced immensely by the convergence of media technologies. Audience fragmentation may also be due to diversity of media content and the committa l or otherwise of the audience to these various broadcasts. In the same way there are many broadcast channels and ranges even at the external broadcasting level such that loyalties may have become fragmented over the galvanic pile of international displace available to the audience.\r\nThe array of broadcast options available to the audience may have frankincense created a remarkable degree of audience fragmentation. There has been created a new multi-platform world due to the convergence of new media. For example, the number of listeners or viewers who now use their PCs or sprightly phones for monitoring the newscast instead of waiting for specific time periods of broadcast from their station of choice usually on traditional media may be increasing as more and more people adopt several new media options available to them.\r\nSuch fragments of listeners or viewers may rattling replace their traditional media channels with the ones they now have in multimedia. Some viewers now bring to watch news highlights on the web at their convenience rather than the scheduled news cast they used to frequent. Traditional broadcasters cannot afford to ignore cable and satellite operators as well as the web, mobile and other alternative distribution channels who may have contributed to the fragmentation of their traditional audience.\r\nToday media scholars and practitioners have continued to debate whether the mass audience genuinely exists any more or whether mass audience has not become a myth. This issue or question persists because they challenge them to re-think presumed givens of the past while also providing a framework inside which to examine the positive evidence of fragmentation of the broadcast audience today. As information and communication technologies increasingly become available and affordable to people and are more wide adopted news and current affairs media may have to strategize on ow to move away from being mass media to media targeting and spec ific deferral programming and distribution. The external channel may have to do some audience research to find 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 embedded in programme content so as to attract the audience. separate forms of distribution that may compliment the traditional may have to be considered and appropriated. How to view and review the audience against the backdrop of fragmentation?\r\nAny evaluation of audience should start with a disturbing doubt about the continuing validity of the term. On the threshold of an era in which pressing a button send for any song, stock number or delineation episode on display anywhere in the house and ‘grazing’ and ‘on demand’ wake or listening replace the regular traditional listening or consider habits. The notion of audience as a community or solidarity group, or as a form of involv ement in a text which one has not summoned or invented oneself, a text that can surprise, becomes problematic.\r\nThe danger to audiences constitute by their disembodiment into individual dreams bubbles, or their disappearance into time-shift recorders who neer find time to listen or view, is not as close as the technologies that allow it. The conditions profound identity, sociality and community are slower to change than technologies. We deal that the world cup or the English union or the Olympic Games find us go to as faithful audience members, be it within the community, the nation or even the globe.\r\nThese examples however paint a picture that the term ‘audiences’ is too general. Fans may be more fitting in the case of football, and ‘public’ in the case of an al-Qaida attack. But, whether listening or viewing as we used to know it is seriously threatened, the aggressively destabilizing transformations of communication technologies suggest that the concept of ‘audience’ should be studied in tandem with its counterpart: the ascendant media and genre it faces.\r\nThose changing technologies also suggest that the way in which audiences are situated †is everyone listening or viewing at the same content, are they listening or viewing alone or together, are they talking or silent, is the transmission live or recorded †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 larger picture suggests that the contemporary media environment holds two types of threats to audiences.\r\nOne is the abundance of what is offered, chasing viewers or listeners to an endless choice of niche channels or stations and time-shift options which may operate as a spear thrower pushing us to turn on good old broadcast radio or TV and find out what is on. The second 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, loaded with a broad range of different communication functions, such as shortcutting mediators in the focus of daily life.\r\nIn reality the internet fosters audiences but goes beyond that to stomach a myriad of services that may not be in the mode of mass communication especially as it does not fulfill the need of listening or viewing texts over which audiences have no direct control and /or texts that enable the suspending of unbelief. Assuming that in spite of the dramatic transformation in the media environment, audiences are still alive, so do the technologies that nurture them , what follows is a review of the changes undergone by mass media audiences and the ways in which these changes were defined.\r\nA very useful scheme to define audiences categorizes them into deuce-ace: citizens, consume rs and jugglers. The audience is categorized thus based on the historical progression of broadcasting through three eras, moving from ‘scarcity’ to ‘availableness’ to ‘plenty’. individually phase carries an image of the audience. Scarce broadcasting addresses audiences as a unified mass of ‘citizens’ while available broadcasting addresses them as individual ‘consumers’.\r\nToday’s broadcasting of plenty seems to be addressing lonely ‘jugglers’ reasonably paralyzed by endless choice, offering listeners or viewers to either commute between discriminate niches or listen or view broadcast as ‘impotent witnesses’. Ellis (2000) as cited by Straubhaar and Boyd (2003), implied that in the first era of scarcity of broadcast, radio and then TV address ‘citizens’ who in the period of availability turn into ‘consumers’ and in the phase of plenty become ‘jugglersâ €™.\r\nThe ‘citizen’ is a passive audience’ often comprising a lonely crowd subjected to broadcast directed at the mass audience as such broadcast reaches all groups uniformly, but this is soon changed to the ‘consumer’ who is an active audience who has choices and multiple interpretations and plurality of ways of getting elusive and varying tastes that can be addressed. The age of plenty provides endless options for activity for the ‘juggler’ audience, but raises the issue of how such activities should be defined.\r\nHere, near endless choices weakens commitment and makes the audience to resort to juggling between competing programmes, stations or channels, or media. The monstrous dimensions of choice in this break phase may be leading in two directions. As indicated by Ellis, jugglers can lead between retreating to any obscure, esoteric, isolating niche of broadcasting or joining the citizens and /or consumers by bout to broadc ast of traditional radio or TV. What is the implication of audience fragmentation for programme content?\r\n sideline the identification of today’s audience as a ‘juggler’ audience due to fragmentation the main programme content strategy should border on how to retain the core listeners and viewers and provide niche programmes at the same time. This requires audience research on a more or less unceasing basis. International broadcast channels may have to imitate the local FM channels that have mastered the art of creating programme formats that make them unique even where there is a proliferation.\r\nThe BBC and VOA do a lot of audience research but exactly make 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 prospects of new media? The new media have been widely hailed as a potential way of escap e from the oppressive top-down politics of mass democracies in which tightly organized political parties make policy unilaterally and diffuse support behind them with minimal negotiation and grass-roots input.\r\nThey provide the means for the provision of information and ideas, almost inexhaustible access for all voices and much feedback and negotiation between sender and receiver in the mass media. They foretell new forums for the development of interest groups and formation of opinion, and allow social dialogue without the inevitable intervention of political institutions or state machineries. They promise true forms of liberty of expression that may be difficult to control by government. There is the prospect of a reduced role for professional journalist to mediate between citizen and government and to mediate in the public playing area generally.\r\nThere is also the promise of absence of boundaries, greater speed of transmission and low cost of trading operations compar ed 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 different from the old in terms of social stratification of ownership and access. It is the better-offs that can access and upgrade the new technologies and they are always forth of the working class or the poor.\r\nThey are differentially empowered and if anything move further ahead of legal age of the people. The new media require new skills and new attitudes to encyclopaedism 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 pith or otherwise on the users of new media technologies. Finally, there is overriding challenge of control and diminishing of the freedom of new media. References Anokwa, K. Lin, A. C. , Salwen, B. M . (2003). International Communication: Concepts and Cases. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth/ Thomson. Axford, B. and Huggins, R. (eds). (2001). New Media and Politics. London: Sage. Curran, J. and Gurevitch, M. (2005). galvanic pile Media and Society, 4th ed. London: Hodder Arnold. Jones, S. G. (2003). encyclopedia of New Media. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Kamalipour, R. Y. (2007). globose Communication, 2nd ed. Belmont, CA: Thomson. Koelsch, F. (1995). The Infomedia Revolution: How it is changing our world and your life.\r\nMontreal: Mcgraw-Hill Ryerson. Liebes, T. (2005). Viewing and Reviewing the Audience: Fashions in Communication Research, in Curran, J. and Gurevitch, M. (2005). Mass Media and Society, 4th ed. London: Hodder Arnold. Mcquail, D. (2006). Mcquail’s 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. Inter national Communication: Concepts and Cases. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth/ Thomson.\r\n'