The Convergence of Media

America’s culture is sort of based on convergence. The convergence of some aspects were more resisted than others, but still integrating cultures, people, and media is historically the American way. The convergence of media is evitable. As a young person with a laptop it is almost impossible for me not to use multiple Medias. In Henry Jenkins’ book, Convergence Culture, he describes what a teenager does probably on a daily basis. I find it funny since it is a great description what I am doing as I write this essay.

Jenkin’s writes, “media convergence impacts the way we consume media. A teenager doing homework may juggle four or five windows, scan the web, listen to and download MP3 files, chat with friends, word-process a paper, and respond to e-mail, shifting rapidly among tasks.” While writing this essay on my laptop, I am checking my email often, using Google for any terms I need to research, talking to some friends on AIM, downloading and listening to music by Easy Star All-Stars. The music by Easy Star All-Stars is also a convergence of cultures. They have made two albums, Dub Side of the Moon and Radiodread, both of which are reggae versions of the original albums made by rock groups, Pink Floyd and Radiohead.

There is a new craze in the sports world. It is fantasy sports. Fantasy sports are a convergence of all types of media. Many people including my friends and I who participate in this new phenomenon, use the internet while the games are going on to keep track of our real time fantasy points and scores of head to head match ups. This is the way I spend most of my Sunday and Monday nights during football season.

This convergence of media in a form of a game has become more exciting over the past couple of years because the athletes are becoming more involved. Some athletes actually openly care about their fantasy points and let their fans know. There is also more “expert” analysis information in different media devices. Newspapers, magazines, sports news television stations, and internet sites have preseason rankings and give weekly or monthly updates. ESPN is one of the leaders in pushing this multimedia usage. They now keep a record for every player in all major sports of percentage of leagues that has a team that owns that player and the player’s average draft position. So not only experts are communicating to the fantasy team owners, but owners nationwide get to communicate via this “survey”.

Though fantasy sports is only convergence of media that I use regularly , there are many other ways media is joined in today’s world to have the public more drawn into shows or sites. The internet has infiltrated much of other media audiences, such as television shows can now be quickly downloaded without effort and a slight cost. Movies and television use the media such as myspace.com to promote and give insider information about their product. Television and movie production studios have not yet gotten to the level of convergence of media that fantasy has, but eventually I believe this will occur.