Media Convergence Meets Deconvergence

Balbi, G. (2017). Deconstructing “Media Convergence”: A Cultural History of the Buzzword, 1980s–2010s. In: Sparviero, S., Peil, C., Balbi, G. (eds) Media Convergence and Deconvergence. Global Transformations in Media and Communication Research – A Palgrave and IAMCR Series. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-51289-1_2 (Full length chapter modified to provide excerpt)

Media Convergence as a Concept

It is now more than thirty years since Ithiel de Sola Pool keenly observed a “convergence of modes” (Pool, 1983, p. 23), by which he referred to the increased connectivity between media and the erosion of formerly fixed boundaries. Ever since then, especially with the emergence and wide diffusion of the internet and online technologies, media convergence has been considered an overarching transition process and one of the major implications of digitization. As such, it has become a buzzword and a key issue in academic texts, policy documents and industrial papers (Diehl & Karmasin, 2013; Dwyer, 2010; Fagerjord & Storsul, 2007; Jenkins, 2006; Jensen, 2010; Jin, 2013; Lugmayr & Dal Zotto, 2016a, b).

The term convergence indicates a movement directed towards, or terminating in, the same point, a “coming together of things that were previously separate” (Meikle & Young, 2011, p. 2). In media and communications, where it has maintained unbroken popularity until today, it is used to describe a wide range of different developments and transformations at the technological, industrial, cultural, social, spatial and political level (for example, Jenkins, 2006; Latzer, 2013; Miller, 2011; see also Balbi, Chap. 2 in this volume). An agreement concerning the existence of a media convergence at the level of technology stands out as the common denominator of different approaches.

Although there have been forms of convergence in the pre-digitization era (see Balbi), contemporary appearances of a technological convergence have in common their being deeply rooted in the process of digitization. With the rise of a common digital standard, digitization has not only facilitated the recording, storage and transmission of data, but also enabled, for the first time, the decoupling of technologies and their respective media services: Digital media formats—be they voice, sound, text or film—were no longer restricted to one device only and, at the same time, almost all media devices were able to represent a plurality of different media formats and services. “This is the core of what is meant by technological convergence: all forms of media being increasingly stored and transferred on the same format and therefore becoming completely interchangeable” (Miller, 2011, p. 73).

Without adhering to a technological-deterministic view on media change, it seems safe to assume that, in the course of digitization, technological convergence has become a reality in today’s media and communication landscape. Previously separate media technologies have indeed come closer together and lost their distinctive features; they are able to represent the same cultural forms and they provide similar functions and scopes of application. As all other forms of media convergence are linked to it, technological convergence can thus be considered an underlying feature of media convergence and a prerequisite for the emergence and development of other manifestations of convergence.

Taking technological convergence as a starting point, media convergence covers a set of different change processes at the macro, meso and micro level (Peil & Mikos, 2017). At the macro level, it can be located in the context of a series of socio-cultural and economic transformations commonly described with keywords such as commercialization, globalization, deregulation and market liberalization. More specifically, the convergence of media and communications markets indicates the opportunities that became available to information and communication technologies (ICTs), media, and telecommunication corporations to expand their activities by redesigning their value chains and becoming multimedia companies.

As a result of this process former telephone and cable providers, television stations, and hardware and software providers offer nowadays a variety of services ranging from the delivery of content to communications and connectivity, often bundled in packages. The resulting emergence of large multinational corporations has not only advanced a cross-media concentration process, but also imposed permanent changes on market structures and dynamics in the media sector which have been the subject of numerous convergence studies (Meikle & Young, 2011, pp. 39–41; Miller, 2011, pp. 77–79) .

At the meso level, media convergence mainly concerns the alteration of media texts as well as their production and distribution. Content, genres and formats have merged in multiple ways and they are distributed over a variety of platforms and channels. As it is widely known, much work in this vein has been done by Henry Jenkins (2006) who elaborated in great depths on transmedia storytelling, the expansion of media texts and the participatory behavior of the media users in convergence cultures.

At the micro level, attention is shifted to the users’ activities in converging media environments (Peil & Mikos, 2017) . The latter are characterized by an extended ensemble of functional identical media technologies of which each affords a plethora of different applications, products and services. Convergent uses of media then refer to ways of access, to individual media biographies and interests and to related media repertoires (Hasebrink & Domeyer, 2012; Kim, 2016; Stark, 2014), or, in short, to “media life,” as Mark Deuze (2012) has described the extensive pervasion and increased invisibility of media in today’s everyday life and its consequences for the users.

All these processes, which are included under the generic concept of media convergence, are evolving dynamically and with close relation to each other. In a certain way, they all predict a movement towards the dissolution of former fixed boundaries and a unification of discrete elements merging into some greater whole. The emergence of the particular and somehow defined vision of media convergence delineated above can be explained with the concept of “social imaginary,” which defines the existence of widely shared understandings that have achieved general legitimacy (Mansell, 2012, p. 6), and which are produced, accepted and then taken for granted as “people seek some consistency in their experience of the ‘reality’ of their lives in a world of rapidly changing technologies and cultural and social norms” (Carpentier, 2011 cited in Mansell, 2012, p. 31).

Therefore, here we claim that there is a widely shared understanding of the imperative nature of media convergence, which has taken a particular pathway associated with assumptions such as efficiency, synergy, simplification, information abundancy, participation, availability and multimodality. The elements of reality of this vision are multimedia companies exploiting the combined transmission of images, texts and sounds to offer better and cheaper products and services that facilitate the existence of active and participating users. As these images have achieved general legitimacy, they render media convergence a powerful concept, serving, among others, to influence the political agenda or to legitimize and justify policy decisions.

Nonetheless, these privileged meanings of media convergence, which emphasize the inevitability of the once adopted direction, are increasingly challenged. Media convergence is not about a newly achieved status quo (Jenkins, 2006, p. 16); rather, it relates to the idea of a process, a continuous change characterized by several parallel running developments and not terminating in a designated endpoint. Therefore, a variety of imaginaries exist. Critical viewpoints, for example, stress that media convergence has been used as a buzzword for outlining the impact of digitization while oversimplifying the complexity of media and technological change and neglecting the possibilities of modifying or turning around paths that have once been taken (Fagerjord & Storsul, 2007; Storsul & Stuedahl, 2007; Silverstone, 1995; see also Balbi, Chap. 2 in this volume).

Alternative views on transformation processes in today’s mediatized societies are essential for a balanced view on media innovations and their advancement. Competing visions of media convergence include some recent ideas of a divergence process complementing and going hand in hand with media convergence (Fagerjord & Stuehdahl, 2007; Lugmayr & Dal Zotto, 2016c). According to this perspective, it is not the integration of media technologies, markets, uses and content but their disintegration, multiplication and increased complexity that are believed to be central features of recent developments. In order to grasp these often underexplored tendencies we suggest comprehending current transformations in media and communication as interplay of media convergence and deconvergence.

Deconvergence is a term originally coined by Jin (2011, 2013) to describe the breaking apart of media and communications companies through spin-offs, split-offs and demergers. It defines a trend that is a reaction to, and departs from, the convergence of media and communication markets, yet it is not divergence because it also unfolds in parallel to the former. In fact, as detailed below, in reaction to the digitization of media and communications, many companies in these sectors have followed either the strategy of expanding their capital and market opportunities, or the strategy of refocusing their operations around core activities, or both of these strategies at different points in time.

Here, the term deconvergence is applied more broadly to different facets of the still dominant media convergence narrative to emphasize the interaction of converging and diverging movements in the media and communication sector. Taking into account processes of diversification and fragmentation as well as unresolved ambiguities that accompany media convergence or are a part of it, deconvergence also stands for the refusal to recognize the ongoing changes as linear, connected processes leading to predictable solutions.

The perspective on deconvergence embraced in this chapter can help shed light on the ambivalent nature of media convergence and the simultaneity of competing forces such as coalescence and drifting apart, or linearity and discontinuity. Its purpose is to provide alternative viewpoints, which are often overlooked in the dominant readings of the concept. While these sites of tension constitute a general focus, two of them, which are the user’s perspective and the convergence of markets, are analyzed more carefully in the following sections. They demonstrate the contradictory nature of technological change and illustrate the ways its consequences for society are met.

Media Convergence and Deconvergence from the User’s Perspective

One distinct area of media convergence discourse concerns the media users as well as their scope of actions and their behavior in convergent media environments. To begin with, there is not even a consensus as to what is meant by convergent media use. Empirical research in this vein shares a common interest in the people’s media activities within environments that are less and less characterized by standalone media and their respective contexts of reception. It takes into consideration the ubiquitous and time-independent availability of media technologies that have similar or identical range of applications.

The media repertoire approach by Hasebrink and Domeyer (2012), for example (see Hasebrink and Hölig, Chap. 6 in this volume, for further explications), describes the specific combination of media and content. Media repertoires refer to relatively stable, transmedia usage patterns that are perceived as the outcome of numerous media contacts resulting from concrete selection decisions.

The polymedia concept introduced by Madianou and Miller (2012, p. 125) supposes the existence of media-saturated environments in which media technologies gain significance in relation to each other. Against this background, it focuses on the meaning-generating user practices that determine the single media’s role within the media ensemble.

Herkman (2012), with his concept of “intermediality,” emphasizes historical continuities and contextual differences between media while Terje Rasmussen (2014) sees the media increasingly personalized and integrated into everyday life leading to a “networked lifeworld.” The “mediatized world” approach (Hepp & Krotz, 2014) also refers to a transmedia understanding of today’s media environments, as it centers on the situations of media communication in the context of new technological possibilities.

Taking into account the capacity of almost all media to provide similar content, communication modes and gratifications, the concept of “communicative figurations” (Hepp & Hasebrink, 2013) looks at patterns of communication processes that exist over a variety of different media.

The point of departure of all these newer, user-oriented approaches to media convergence is the decoupling of device and services, which render ineffective conclusions on usage based on the selection of media technology. Rather, the whole media ensemble, as well as the media’s overlaps, is considered in order to comprehend how the discrete devices are used, combined and put in relation to each other.

For the purpose of describing the interplay of convergence and deconvergence from the user’s perspective and to shed light on processes that so far have often been overlooked, three different dimensions of media usage have been identified where these antagonisms show in a particular way: (1) the proliferation of devices and media-related practices; (2) the transmedia flow of content and the dissolution of distinctive usage scenarios; (3) the interconnection of media and the management of domestic infrastructures.

The Proliferation of Devices and of Media Related Practices

An early and central idea of media convergence touching the usage dimension has been the imagination of the “supermedium” (Jenkins, 2001; Herkman, 2012, p. 11) or the “Über-Box” (Fagerjord, 2002)— the emergence of an all-in-one device as single point of media contact where all media uses come together (see also van Dijk, 2012). This supermedium has in fact become a reality: now, even the smallest media technology enables access to a great variety of functionalities and applications which were previously linked to standalone devices only. Highly personalized and portable online media like the smartphone integrate telecommunications, content and information technology, and thus represent in an almost paradigmatic manner one of the original notions of technological convergence.

Yet this transformation of media into all-purpose devices is far from replacing the numerous technologies and boxes available in the home and offering a single solution for all the mediated activities of the users. In fact, almost every device has kept its unique place in the media ensemble. And since media have not only expanded their scope, but also specialized in terms of size, look and performance, households are now engaging with more devices than ever before.

Described by Jenkins (2006, p. 14) as the “black box fallacy,” the number and diversity of technologies has significantly increased in the last few years. And, equally, so have the standards, formats and practices of the users. Part of this convergence process is that the media have indeed moved closer together, as they are linked in manifold ways to one another. However, involving a high degree of disorder and complexity, the outcome of this development is not at all a streamlining of the media landscape.

Rather than owning and making use of one personal all-round medium, users nowadays have to deal with an extremely sophisticated media environment and a multiplicity of media technologies, each of which comes with a specific focus or core competence and a broad range of functionalities. Traits of deconvergence thus appear in different forms of media access, in personalized media interests, in individualized media repertoires and in disparate media biographies.

The strong rise of media technologies, which is characteristic of convergent media environments, can be easily explained on the basis of the German long-term study Massenkommunikation (mass communication). In the response options of a question concerning the media equipment in the home, it listed only two electronic devices in the year 1970, but more than ten times as much in 2010 (van Eimeren & Ridder, 2011, p. 3). Several of these devices enable internet access and thus facilitate the use of various applications that are provided by other media as well.

Ultimately, after 2010 even more devices including tablet computers have contributed to the increased variety of multipurpose technologies available to the average household (Engel & Breunig, 2015, p. 311). The users are thus able to make use of a certain media technology based on individual interests and demands. For any imaginable request they can select a specific device and assign a particular task to it.

At the same time, the practices of media use have multiplied and diversified, too. Before digitization, one medium was usually related to only one form of activity (for example the radio was related to the practice of listening). Today, the above-mentioned study lists fifteen general online activities (for example, online banking, information seeking, forum discussions and so on) alone for the internet and seven activities linked to specific applications, like instant messaging or the involvement in photo communities (Frees & Koch, 2015, p. 372).

In addition, more than twenty activities are allocated to just one single online application, such as the use of online communities (for example, watching videos, uploading photos, posting and so on) (Busemann & Gscheidle, 2012, p. 383). This variety of media-related activities exemplifies a fundamental shift of media communication which refers to a growing disparity rather than to a process of merging.

The Transmedia Flow of Content and the Dissolution of Distinctive Usage Scenarios

The interplay of media convergence and deconvergence becomes also apparent in the appropriation of media texts. On the one hand, media content, genres and modalities have grown together, most notably on the internet where written text, audiovisual content and interactive elements are regularly combined. On the other hand, the multiplication of distribution channels and the cost-effective production of digital content have led to the emergence of numerous platforms and to the differentiation of formats. As a consequence, the users have more options than ever to select the content they like while specialized interests can be met more easily by the producers. The convergence of media texts is thus likely to come along with greater individualization, fragmentation and deconvergence on the side of the users (Peil & Mikos, 2017).

One strategy to deal with the increasingly complex and disordered flow of content is the concept of transmedia storytelling (Jenkins, 2006), which has gained much attention in media and communications. It refers to a new form of narration that creates a textual universe and an overall media experience around a specific narrative. Jenkins himself (2006, p. 19) speaks of the “art of world making” where different media are organized around a starting point, such as a movie or a TV series, in order to let the narrative expand onto diverse platforms and to maintain a continuous audience flow.

Transmedia stories have to be functioning both within a single medium and as a narrative puzzle piece within a transmedia cosmos, comprising classic media as well as computer or mobile games and merchandising products (Peil & Schwaab, 2014, p. 342; Peil & Mikos, 2017). They are considered highly participative, driven top-down by the producers and also bottom-up by the users, who can decide how deep they want to immerse themselves in a given story. While the migration of texts across different media is constitutive of convergent media environments, the relocation of usage practices onto different devices and platforms indicates tendencies of deconvergence.

In the shifting reception of television from the home TV set to the small display of the smartphone, Max Dawson (2007, p. 233), for example, has detected an “unbundling” of media objects: Larger program packages like an episode of a TV series or a news show are shaped into smaller, more easily consumed segments which are able to promote a falling apart of media experiences and a fragmentation of media usage into diminishing units of signification.

By emphasizing the coexistence of separate media, second screens similarly refer to disintegration and a “crisis of convergence,” as Stauff (2015, p. 127) explains: “‘Second screen’ therefore points at a not only simultaneous, but also interrelated and supplementary use of different screens, thereby undermining the clear distinction between separate media.”

Fleeting forms of media consumption and shorter periods of attention as well as parallel, overlapping uses of different media are thus likely to characterize media use in convergent media environments. In contrast, with the emergence of additional distribution channels like DVD boxes and streaming services, new forms of concentrated and time-consuming media reception have arisen, too, for instance, in the form of binge watching (Mikos, 2016) or “media marathoning” (Perks, 2015).

The described processes are ambiguous, and they are not fully captured by the notion of convergent media use. In “Convergence Culture”, Jenkins (2006) refers to an intensified experience of media texts that are enhanced and improved through transmedia storytelling. The stories are too broad and complex for being told in one medium only. The activities of the users who engage in the text are perceived as richer and more comprehensive compared with past forms of media reception (Schwaab, 2013).

This association of an advanced condition or product is also part of the dominant social imaginary of media convergence. But rather than coming together or matching a harmonized textual universe, media usage is marked by overlaps of content, meaning and context (D’heer & Courtois, 2016; Stauff, 2015; vukanovic, 2016).

The convergence of media texts thus corresponds with different forms of deconvergence, as illustrated in the increased complexity of usage situations. These are reflected in opposing tendencies, such as elusive and extensive forms of media reception, and in nonlinear and multidimensional consumption modes resulting from the ubiquitous availability of media texts and their independence from former technological restrictions.

The Interconnection of Media and the Management of Domestic Infrastructures^[1]

A seamless interconnection of different media and their smooth interplay is part of the dominant social imaginary of media convergence, since convergence is expected “to allow user experiences to move fluidly through multiple content and devices” (Tavares & Schofield, 2016, p. 246). While at the hardware level home networks need to be set up and maintained in order to establish the domestic infrastructures and manage the interrelations of convergent media technologies, cloud services are supposed to integrate media at the software level. In fact, cloud services seem to represent everything that convergence stands for: They integrate data, applications and personalized content, regardless of type or format, and make them available to users wherever they are and whenever they need them, thus supporting multi-device and cross-platform uses of media. In many respects, however, the idea of the unhindered interplay of media devices and the ubiquitous accessibility of content are inclined to conceal the disruptions and deconvergences that are involved in these processes.

First of all, unlimited interoperability and connection is not necessarily supported by the device manufacturers and service providers. Often, lock-in systems force users to receive content, services and applications from one brand only as switching to another brand goes with higher costs and inconveniences. “In digital cross-media culture, the specific affordances of each device or platform only unfold through interconnection with others; seamless connection, however, is guaranteed only by the ‘walled garden’ (the market power and proprietary technical standards) of one brand strongly constraining interoperability” (Stauff, 2015, p. 132). As a matter of fact, infrastructures are shaped by the market’s need to be profitable and to strengthen customer loyalty; they are not automatically geared towards convergence at the side of the users. Deconvergence comes into play when connections fail or there is a lack of compatibility between content producers and distribution platform, or between services and devices.

More important, the users themselves are often compromising the fluent interplay of media since the work of connecting devices and bringing content and services together within the personal media repertoire lies mainly in their hands. Even though software solutions suggest compensating for some of these exercises, their simplifying potential tends to be overvalued. “Far from serving to realize the putative end of labour in the home, new technologies often require significant work” (Kennedy, nansen, Arnold, Wilken, & Gibbs, 2015, p. 410). The labor of establishing media convergence includes diverse tasks such as setting up digital networks, storing, synchronizing and organizing data, and administering the media ensemble. In addition, with the increasing number of devices and shorter production cycles, regular and sometimes challenging updates, maintenance and coordination tasks become necessary. In light of the differentiation of almost each media device and given the permanent advancement of networked technologies these exercises can be demanding and frustrating (Montpetit, 2016). For a beneficial exploitation of convergent media environments, people need to have certain skills, they need to invest time, money and social capital in their media usage. This aspect of ability should not be underestimated as several studies point to the user’s need for helpers and supporters who bring their technical expertise in order to connect media and make them work (Bakardjieva, 2005, p. 98; Courtois & verdegem, 2016; Peil & Röser, 2014, p. 241). In this sense, media convergence can be perceived as some kind of challenge or even burden for the users with the potential to tire them out or overstrain them. The dominant social imaginary of media convergence, represented in the idea of the harmonized and interconnected infrastructure, should therefore be complemented by the notion of labor that comes into play when dealing with manifestations of deconvergence at the level of structures and interfaces.

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Peil, C., Sparviero, S. (2017). Media Convergence Meets Deconvergence. This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)