Mediamorphosis and Media convergence

Today, we are surrounded by a multi-level convergent media world where all modes of communication and information are continually reforming to adapt to the enduring demands of technologies, "changing the way we create, consume, learn and interact with each other". A phenomenon involving the interlocking of computing and information technology companies, telecommunications networks, and content providers from the publishing worlds of newspapers, magazines, music, radio, television, films, and entertainment software. Media convergence brings together the "three Cs"-computing, communications, and content.
The rise of digital communication in the late 20th century has made it possible for media organizations to deliver text, audio, and video material over the same wired, wireless, or fiber-optic connections. It also inspired some media organizations to explore multimedia delivery of information. This digital convergence of news media, in particular, was called "Mediamorphosis" by researcher Roger Fidler, in his 1997 book by that name.

Convergence in this instance is defined as the interlinking of computing and other information technologies, media content, and communication networks that has arisen as the result of the evolution and popularization of the Internet as well as the activities, products and services that have emerged in the digital media space. Many experts view this as simply being the tip of the iceberg, as all facets of institutional activity and social life such as business, government, art, journalism, health, and education are increasingly being carried out in these digital media spaces across a growing network of information and communication technology devices.
Jenkins (2006:3), defines convergence as ‘flow of content across multiple media platforms’, suggesting that media audiences nowadays play a crucial role in creating and distributing content, and convergence therefore has to be examined in terms of social, as well as technological changes within the society. According to Jenkins, media convergence is an ongoing process that should not be viewed as a displacement of the old media, but rather as interaction between different media forms and platforms (Jenkins, 2006). Supporting this argument, Deuze cited in Erdal (2011) suggests that media convergence should be viewed as ‘cooperation and collaboration’ between previously unconnected media forms and platforms.  Burnett and Marshall cited in Grant and Wilkinson (2008:5) explain convergence as ‘blending of the media, telecommunications and computer industries’ or, in other words, as the process of blurring the boundaries between different media platforms and uniting them into one digital form.

 In their book Media Convergence: Networked Digital Media in Everyday Life, Graham Meikle and Sherman Young observe that convergence can be understood in four dimensions:

technological—the combination of computing, communications and content around networked digital media platforms;

industrial—the engagement of established media institutions in the digital media space, and the rise of digitally-based companies such as Google, Apple, Microsoft and others as significant media content providers;

• social—the rise of social network media such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, and the growth of user-created content; and
• textual—the re-use and remixing of media into what has been termed a ‘transmedia’ model, where stories and media content (for example, sounds, images, written text) are dispersed across multiple media platforms

Referrence

1. Fidler, Roger F. Mediamorphosis: Understanding New Media. Thousand Oaks, CA: Pine Forge, 1997.
2. Jenkins, Henry (2006) Convergence Culture, New York University Press, New York.
3. Meikle, G., & Young, S. (2012). Media convergence. Basingstoke, Hampshire [England]: Palgrave Macmillan.
4. Technological convergence (Wikipedia) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological_convergence

The medium is the message

After giving an oral report that may have included a PowerPoint presentation and possibly a handout one may be required to write a paper for the report. You would not present information in the same way in a PowerPoint as you would on a handout or when you delivered the content verbally. Because of the changes you make from one medium to the next, your audience perceives the information differently based on how it is delivered. Each of those elements, the report, the PowerPoint and the presentation, is a remediation of your original paper. 

Marshall McLuhan

Portrait by Yousuf Karsh. Copyright the Estate of Yousuf Karsh, California.

McLuhan is known for coining the expressions the medium is the message and the global village, and for predicting the World Wide Web almost thirty years before it was invented




Remediation is the process of taking a text, whether it is a newspaper article, a story, a film or even something like a business proposal or a report, and translating it into a new medium. Remediation is based on the idea of the famous media theorist Marshall McLuhan, who once said that "the medium is the message."  This meant that how we perceive information changes based the way in which that information is presented.

Regardless of what kind of remediation you are taking on, it is vital to understand how the remediation process works. Audience is one of the most important elements of the remediation process, because the creator of the medium must take into consideration how the work will be understood and interpreted. By knowing how to interpret the most important ideas from the original text and by transferring them in such a way as to give new meaning to the interpretation without misrepresenting the original, you will be far more successful in conveying important ideas to your audience and in understanding how important the way you present your information is.

In libraries and information centers, remediation is a concept and idea whose time has come, cannot be wished away or be defeated. As volumes and volumes of materials are created for a subject topic, coalescing this information and putting it in a summarized form becomes necessary and more so for academic libraries where readers want to get the concept without being bombarded with pages of so many analogies just to achieve the same concept. We can call this type Text-to-Text Remediation

Another type is Text-to-Visual Remediation where you translate text into either a single image or a series of images (a video or slideshow). These two types of remediation fundamentally involve the same process—translating text into visuals. The purpose of a text-to-visual remediation is to convey the main ideas of the text with the use of visual images. Obviously you must pay attention to purpose and audience. Remediation should be an expression of your feelings about a particular text, but it should be rooted in an understanding of the original text, including the historical context out of which it came, and an application of rhetorical strategies—knowledge that that you should be able to eloquently defend in a reflection piece on the remediation.