Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies recent issues

Editorial

Knight, J., Weedon, A. — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 09:46:05 PDT

Working Notions of Active Audiences: Further Research on the Active Participant in Convergent Media Industries

Sundet, V. S., Ytreberg, E. — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 09:46:05 PDT

Recent research on the media industries has been centrally concerned with the blurring of boundaries between production and reception in an era of digitalization and convergence. The article argues for a need for research to consider more closely the importance of notions of the ‘active audience’ within today’s media industries. Overall conceptual work has been done on ‘convergence culture’, and much scholarly debate currently centres around the pros and cons of convergence; whether it empowers ‘produsers’ or the industries themselves. Important as they are, these debates run the risk of stagnation if they are not informed by further empirical research on the concrete ways that media institutions put ‘activity’ to strategic use. The article reports from a survey on how notions of activity, sociability and technological novelty function as strategic ‘working notions’ for Norwegian media industry executives.

The De/Stabilization of Identity in Online Fan Communities: Article

Whiteman, N. — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 09:46:05 PDT

This article explores the negotiation of fan identity within two internet-based fan communities (the television fan site City of Angel and videogame fan site Silent Hill Heaven) in responses to two destabilizing events (the ‘Save Angel’ campaign and the release of the Silent Hill film). The article explores three aspects of the posting activity relating to these events: the ways that members, at times, constitute what it is to be a fan through the reification of their own agency; the ways that posters conceptualize external threats to their own interests; and the ways that they respond to internal challenges to the stability of these settings. Developing a relational approach to the study of fan identity, the article examines how these moves are tied into ongoing struggles for legitimacy within these sites.

Convergence Revisited: Toward a Modified Pattern of Communications Governance

Latzer, M. — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 09:46:05 PDT

This article revisits the nature and governance implications of the convergence phenomenon more than a decade after it gained major prominence in politics and research. It analyses the reforms undertaken in reaction to convergence, outlines their common features, and argues that a worldwide trend towards a modified common governance pattern for convergent communications markets is emerging. The major constituent components include integrated strategies, control structures and legal frameworks for the convergent communications sector; a technology-neutral functional taxonomy; a subdivision into transmission and content regulation; and a growing reliance on alternative modes of regulation such as self- and co-regulation.

'Waiting for the Kiss of Life': Mobile Media and Advertising

Wilken, R., Sinclair, J. — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 09:46:05 PDT

Mobile media, especially cellphones, are now seen and heard everywhere, forming an intrinsic part of the daily lives and habits of billions of people worldwide. Curiously, despite this wide diffusion and remarkable rate of adoption, as an advertising platform the cellphone is, in the words of one commentator, still very much ‘a mass medium waiting for the kiss of life’. This article examines why this is the case, by exploring the ‘complex mobile phone ecosystem’ and the factors that contribute to the rather hesitant adoption of mobile advertising, with particular attention to the inherent conflicts amongst the interested parties in the system. It does this through a meta-analysis of themes and issues evinced in mainstream media and the advertising trade press. Study of this data is supplemented by drawing on a number of critical studies within the available research literature on the subject.

Media Crisis Management in Traditional and Digital Newsrooms

Olsson, E.-K. — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 09:46:05 PDT

By comparing two newsrooms’ responses, one with a traditional mode of production and one with a digital, to the terror attacks of 9/11, this article demonstrates that newsrooms, in contrast to what previous research tells us, differ in their ability to cover crisis events. Drawing upon findings from previous research on how news organizations cope with extraordinary — and crisis — events, the study explains news desks’ ability to cope with the disruptions of everyday deadlines caused by ‘disaster marathon modes’ of reporting, based on organizational everyday structures and previous experiences. The study concludes that a digital newsroom designed to handle 24 hour reporting does not necessarily nor automatically have a suitable structure to deal with a crisis event. Rather, in this particular case the structure used for 24/7 coverage, based on journalists’ independence and decentralization, was directly counterproductive when dealing with a crisis event.

New Media for New Organs: A Virtual Community for Pediatric Post-Transplant Patients

Bers, M. U. — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 09:46:05 PDT

This article describes an eight-month pilot study in which 19 pediatric post-transplant patients at Children’s Hospital Boston, ages 11 to 15, used a computer-based psychosocial intervention developed on the Zora 3D multiuser environment. Zora provides tools to create an online virtual city and populate it with houses and personally-meaningful objects. Users can communicate with each other via real-time chat and participate in open-ended guided activities to create a social network of peers. Preliminary results support the idea that innovative technologies can help adolescent patients to create a support network of peers when face-to-face interactions are impossible.

Banal Bohemia: Blogging from the Ivory Tower Hot-Desk

Gregg, M. — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 09:46:05 PDT

While academic blogging has emerged as a distinct genre in the past few years (Walker, 2006), a notable gap exists between those who blog from secure positions within the profession and PhD and junior faculty bloggers whose employment status is more marginal. This article draws on subcultural theory to discuss the unique features of these two latter types and the functions they serve for their authors. The analysis demonstrates that blogs are important sites of support for those who aspire to and currently work in academia at the same time as they are a powerful indictment of the job conditions experienced therein. The article therefore concludes by suggesting that the positive aspects of collegiality and solace taking place online for a new generation of scholars risk remaining disconnected from an effective labour politics — one that could change the very nature of the grievances blogs appear so well designed to express.

Review: Bruce Bennett, Marc Furstenau and Adrian MacKenzie (eds). Cinema and Technology: Cultures, Theories, Practices. Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan, 2008. 265 pages, ISBN 13--978--0--230--52477--4

Brereton, P. — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 09:46:05 PDT

Book Review: David Buckingham. Beyond Technology: Children's Learning in the Age of Digital Culture. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2007. 209 pages, ISBN 13--978--07456--3880--5 (hbk), ISBN 13--978--07456--3881--2 (pbk)

Jacques, K. — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 09:46:05 PDT

Editorial: Cultural Memory and Digital Preservation

Santone, J., Straw, W. — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 03:49:41 PDT

Towards the Preservation of Local Computer Game Software: Challenges, Strategies, Reflections

Swalwell, M. — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 03:49:41 PDT

/ New Zealand's digital game history includes a significant quantity of locally written software titles from the 1980s. Currently, few people are aware of this, no institutional collections exist, and institutional preservation efforts are directed elsewhere. This context prompted the assembly of a multidisciplinary team of researchers to bring legal, technical, and media-historical expertise to bear on these titles' preservation. This article briefly introduces the game preservation landscape, before outlining the case for the preservation of local game software. It reports on the challenges faced in a pilot study to preserve locally written game software for the Sega SC3000 computer. The initial plan — to secure licence agreements that would, in turn, enable technical preservation — gave way as a more complex intertwining of the legal and technical emerged. Navigating these challenges required a change of strategy: from emulation to translation. Translation — from BASIC to Java — is an elegant solution, in the circumstances. As well as recounting the project's practical realization, this article considers the fidelity of the conserved digital game to its `original'.

Narrative Convergence, Cross-Sited Productions and the Archival Dilemma

Ruppel, M. — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 03:49:41 PDT

/ This article addresses the speculative role of digital preservation from the standpoint of convergent literatures. `Cross-sited narratives', multimodal stories told across media channels, are introduced here as a specific mode of narrative instrumentality. It is argued that contemporary models of the archive structured on organizational models such as genetic criticism and on preservational models such as emulation and migration are not equipped to handle cross-sited works, as they are premised on mono-media sensibilities. Primarily exploring Mark Danielewski's House of Leaves (2000) and Neil Young's Greendale (2003), two works that resist digitization both materially and thematically, the claim is made that although there are no functional models that might accommodate either of these productions, by speculating about their future we not only can obtain a better understanding of the implicit assumptions of digital preservation, but also of cross-siting itself.

A Sound that Never Sounded: The Historical Construction of Sound Fidelity

Stakelon, P. — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 03:49:41 PDT

/ Cylinder recordings as an early form of reproducible sound media were first used in 1877 and continued to be produced commercially up until 1929 by Edison. The many cylinders that exist today in various states of decomposition have become objects of concern for those with an interest in historical sound recordings. With this concern leading to preservation efforts converting cylinder sounds into digital form, how should a cylinder sound and with the transformative potential for digital manipulation readily available, how should a digital file of a cylinder record sound? This article discusses the production process of both cylinder recordings and their digital conversions, revealing how fidelity never actually existed in the production process. The University of California Santa Barbara's Cylinder Preservation and Digitization Project exemplifies a digital preservation project that reveals what is valued during the digital conversion process. By describing how the cylinders are imbued with meaning through the concerns of manufactures, archivists, internet users and collectors, this article proves that processes concerned with the objectification of sound are motivated by specific social and technological desires motivated by nostalgia for an imagined sound fidelity.

Between Creation and Preservation: The ANARCHIVE Project

Lessard, B. — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 03:49:41 PDT

/ This article is concerned with the pioneering digital archive of media arts ANARCHIVE, which is supervised by Anne-Marie Duguet (Université de Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne/University of New South Wales). Digitally archiving the works of media and video artists Antonio Muntadas (Muntadas Media Architecture Installations, 1999), Michael Snow (Digital Snow, 2002), Thierry Kuntzel (Title TK, 2006), and Jean Otth (Autour du Concile de Nicée, 2008), ANARCHIVE currently consists of one CD-ROM and three DVD-ROMs that include an important database of a given artist's oeuvre and that attest to the relational potential of digital archiving. Offering another type of digital archive than the ones found online, ANARCHIVE provides the user with what is arguably the most original form of digital archive today in the fields of contemporary and media arts. The rise of digital archives has accompanied a number of critical efforts that inquire into the ontological nature of the artefact once it has been `dematerialized'. More than a question of materiality or lack thereof, I wish to show that a project such as ANARCHIVE introduces another way of conceiving of cultural memory and digital preservation in the age of new media. Indeed, what such a project demonstrates is that relational aesthetics has come to occupy a more central role than materiality in the appreciation and preservation of cultural and media memories.

Warring Pixels: Cultural Memory, Digital Testimony, and the Conflict in Iraq

Chare, N. — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 03:49:41 PDT

/ This article explores the ways in which the films In the Valley of Elah (2006), Battle for Haditha (2007) and Redacted (2007) act as forms of testimony to the Iraq conflict and to the roles played by digital technology in bearing witness to it. The article argues for a greater recognition of the materiality of the digital and for an acknowledgment of its indexical properties as this has significant implications for its status as testament and for its claims to authenticity. Drawing on Wilfred Bion's work on the container/contained relationship, the article also suggests that the films perform a valuable function as containers that provide historical events such as the conflict in Iraq with a graspable form. Works of mainstream cinema that engage with recent history are often viewed ambivalently but the article argues that, on occasion, they can make a significant contribution to the production and dissemination of cultural memory.

Self-Emulation: Upgrades in New Media Art and the Potential Loss of Narrative

Langill, C. S. — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 03:49:41 PDT

/ In this article I examine the ways the archival process has compelled artists working in early electronic media, and new media to `self-emulate', to produce new versions of their artworks. I propose that upgrading steals the narrative of progress that spoke to the cultural effects of emerging technologies informing the original production of the work. Three artworks are examined in order to investigate how self-emulation has effected the evolution of new media artworks: The Helpless Robot by Norman White (1986—2004), Small Artist Pushing Technology (1987—) by Doug Back, and Listening Post (2003—) by Mark Hansen and Ben Rubin. The production of new versions of electronic media works primarily concerns integration with contemporary modes of exhibition and aesthetic trends. However, the materials that generated early electronic media works spoke to the larger discourse of our relationship to technology. This article investigates this dilemma.

Mapping Footprints: A Sonic Walkthrough of Landscapes and Cultures

Veronesi, F., Gemeinboeck, P. — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 03:49:41 PDT

/ Mobile, location-aware technologies are cultural tools for the re-enactment, re-embodiment and recontextualization of history and memory in our everyday life. The transformative potential of spatial practices that creatively employ these technologies can renegotiate our experience of place by allowing us to co-inhabit past and present storied spaces of different cultures. The research project Mapping Footprints explores alternative means of knowing and making place through a spatial practice which mediatizes heritage conservation sites with archival records. In the context of Elvina site, a heritage place of Aboriginal culture in Sydney, we experiment with a place-making practice where the re-storing of memory renegotiates archived oral histories and the geography of the site. We will look at the role of mediation, performativity, and representation in shaping both the development process and the experience of this augmented, storied landscape.

Film Reviews: Lyrical Nitrate. Directed by Peter Delpeut, The Netherlands 1990. Decasia. Directed by Bill Morrison, USA 2002

Cammaer, G. J. — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 03:49:41 PDT

Editorial: Shifting Notions of Convergence

Knight, J., Weedon, A. — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 08:31:22 PDT

On the Non-Autonomy of the Virtual

Malpas, J. — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 08:31:22 PDT

Much contemporary talk of virtual 'worlds' proceeds as if the virtual could somehow be considered as in competition with or as an alternative to the world of the 'nonvirtual' or the 'everyday'. This article argues that such a contrast is fundamentally mistaken, and that the virtual is not autonomous with respect to the everyday, but is rather embedded within it, and an extension of it.

Claiming a Stake in the Videogame: What Grown-Ups Say to Rationalize and Normalize Gaming

Thornham, H. — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 08:31:22 PDT

This article explores the rationalizations and normalizations adult gamers offer in their justifications of both gaming 'itself', and the possession of a videogame console. While there has been a proliferation in research on the videogame recently in terms of what Kerr et al. describe as the 'productive use of new media' (in their 2006 article 'New Media — New Pleasures?' p. 64), which includes issues relating to gender, pleasure, production and gameplay as well as more ethnographic research relating to young people and games, there has been a significant gap in research around adult gamers. This article is the result of four years' ethnographic research, which followed 11 participant gaming households (along with the questionnaire of over 100 respondents), recording, interviewing and observing them prior to, during and after gameplay. Included in this demographic are all-female and all-male households, mixed gender, sexuality and ethnicity, and diverse geographical intake from Northern Ireland to southern England. Throughout my research and this article, I argue the political and social necessity of including gamers and their discourses into research on gaming in order to better understand the significance of gaming and gaming discourses on our social and political lives.

Radiohead's Managerial Creativity

Morrow, G. — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 08:31:22 PDT

This article will explore the way in which Radiohead have been managerially creative through their use of new media technologies. The band released their seventh album In Rainbows on the 10 October 2007 as a digital download for which consumers chose their own price: beginning at nothing. The issue of whether this example presents a model for other artists to bypass established record labels will be explored. This article will also use this discussion to look more broadly at how artist managers create marketing strategies that involve new technologies and in doing so it will address various issues concerning the future management and control of the five key income stream groups stemming from contemporary music in the digital age. While Radiohead are in a position to be able to control all of their own income streams, they have only gotten into this position as a result of the old system.

Going the Extra Mile: Emotional and Commercial Imperatives in New Media Work

Kennedy, H. — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 08:31:22 PDT

Many stereotypes of new media workers exist: they are exemplary of the future of work and of working in the new economy; their work is emotional; their passion for new media translates into creativity in the production process. Of course, none of these stereotypes paints a full picture. This article proposes that a study of the micropolitics of a new media production process, which explores the articulation of the emotional with commercial imperatives, results in a different story about new media work and points to some of the many complexities of making new media objects. The article further suggests that there is a need for a nuanced unpacking of the concepts of emotional and affective labour, which recognizes the different, sometimes opposing affects and emotions that drive new media work. It concludes that the science and technology studies' term 'interpretative flexibility' provides a useful conceptual tool with which to conceive of the complex emotional and commercial imperatives that drive new media work.

Mobile TV: Old and New in the Construction of an Emergent Technology

Orgad, S. — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 08:31:22 PDT

This article explores how mobile television is being constructed and understood, focusing on four concepts used in contemporary public debate to discuss the technology, namely 'TV in your pocket', 'TV anytime, anywhere', 'TV on the go', and 'Enhanced TV'. Drawing on an analysis of industry reports, conference proceedings, websites, academic studies, press coverage, results of trials, advertisements and expert interviews, we examine the ways in which experts involved in the production, marketing, delivery and analysis of mobile TV regard this emergent technology. It is argued that mobile TV is constructed by these experts as a novel technological and cultural experience and form, while at the same time the rhetoric of novelty is paralleled with a continuous emphasis on the new medium's relation to familiar technological worlds. The article concludes by offering an explanation for this new/old articulation of mobile TV.

Cross-Media (Re)Production Cultures

Erdal, I. J. — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 08:31:22 PDT

Complex media organizations contain a number of different journalistic cultures, and the introduction of convergence and cooperation across media platforms poses a number of challenges related to this. This article looks at production cultures in an integrated news broadcasting organization. What happens when convergence strategies meet the web of inter-organizational subcultures associated with television, radio and the web? One significant development is that of new journalistic hierarchies related to increased reuse of content in news production processes. One of the main arguments for cross-media journalism from a management perspective is that spending fewer resources on republishing and updating news makes it possible to channel resources towards doing 'real journalism'. As a result, old hierarchies are supplemented by new ones. One of them is the emerging division between those reporters being given more time to research their own stories and do 'real journalism', those working mainly with updating or developing news stories that are already made, and those reproducing content for a different platform.

Teaching Button-Pushing versus Teaching Thinking: The State of New Media Education in US Universities

Huang, E. — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 08:31:22 PDT

Using content analysis and survey, this study examines how the teaching of thinking skills and that of technological skills have been balanced in US new media programs to produce both employable graduates and life-long learners. Findings show that most programs have balanced the two skill sets but that more effort should be made to integrate the teaching of both skill sets in individual courses to give students an expedited, holistic learning experience.

Book Review: Cecilia Friend and Jane B. Singer. Online Journalism Ethics: Traditions and Transitions. Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 2007. 245pp. ISBN pbk 978 0 7656 1574 9, (hbk) 978 0 7656 1573 2. Charlie Beckett. Supermedia: Saving Journalism So It Can Save the World. Malden, MA: Wiley/Blackwell Publishing, 2008. 205pp. ISBN (pbk) 978 1 4051 7923, (hbk) 978 1 4051 7924 9. Michael Bugeja. Living Ethics: Across Media Platforms. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2007. 341pp. ISBN (pbk) 978 0 1951 8860 8

Gaber, I. — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 08:31:22 PDT

Book Review: Tarleton Gillespie. Wired Shut: Copyright and the Shape of Digital Culture. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2007. viii + 395pp. ISBN (hbk) 13 978 0 262 07282 3

Jewitt, R. — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 08:31:22 PDT

Editorial

Knight, J., Weedon, A. — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 03:01:19 PST

SoCal DigiCult

Sterling, B. — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 03:01:19 PST

Vintners tell us it is the unique combination of the soil and the local climate which makes the richness of the wine. The location is everything. Can we say the same of different regions' contribution to digital culture — of Amsterdam, London, Moscow, Ljubljana, Vienna, Milan, Tokyo, New York, Melbourne, Barcelona? Science fiction author and visionary Bruce Sterling reflects on Southern California's particular contribution, selecting key points in its pioneering history of innovation.

When Geeks Go Camping: Finding California in Cyberspace

Thomas, S. — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 03:01:19 PST

This article examines the evolution of nature metaphors in computing and cyberspace via some examples of the influence of Californian outdoor life on computer culture in Silicon Valley and beyond. It is drawn from research for a book-length study, The Wild Surmise: Nature and Cyberspace (http://www.thewildsurmise.com), which discusses the many ways in which we use our experiences of nature to situate and comprehend our experiences of cyberspace. It examines the hypothesis that cyberspace contains not only the cities and suburbs of cyberpunk but also the great outdoors, from rural landscapes to wildest nature. The project will be extensively developed in relation to California culture and landscapes during a 2009 Visiting Scholarship to the University of California, Santa Barbara, funded by The British Academy.

Rigorous Interdisciplinary Pedagogy: Five Years of ACE

Penny, S. — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 03:01:19 PST

The emergence of media-arts and digital cultural practices has provided a highly charged context for the development of interdisciplinary pedagogy, combining as it does, practices and traditions from historically, culturally and theoretically wildly divergent disciplines. This article addresses aspects of effective interdisciplinary educational process, attending to questions of pedagogy, theory and institutional pragmatics. In my analysis, the key components of such a project are: deep technical training and understanding; deep training in artmaking and cultural practice; deep theoretical and historical contextualization, and an open and rigorous interdisciplinary context which maximally facilitates the negotiation of these often divergent ways of thinking and making. In building such interdisciplinary practice in the context of a campus, one abruptly confronts the discontinuity between the rapidly changing fluidity of the contemporary moment and the relative stasis of institutionalized disciplines which have an investment in maintaining their identity in the face of such change. Implicit in the project then, is not simply the development of a context for deep interdisciplinary invention, but the formation of practitioners who are neither artists nor engineers, or who are equal parts both. In either case, this formation confounds the disciplines and creates a vacuum of institutional context, which has resounding implications for the survival and flourishing of such initiatives and their practitioners.

Recombinant Poetics, Urban Flanerie, and Experimentation in the Database Narrative Bleeding Through: Layers of Los Angeles 1920--1986

Benezet, D. — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 03:01:19 PST

Bleeding Through: Layers of Los Angeles 1920—1986, is a DVD-ROM produced under the auspices of the Labyrinth Project at the University of Southern California, and directed by the scholar/artist Norman Klein. Drawing on hundreds of photographs, newspaper clippings and films from the archives of USC, and the Los Angeles Public Library, among other sources, this DVD offers us the chance to reconsider our understanding and vision of Southern California. This database narrative proposes a multi-perspectived and critically informed exploration of Los Angeles, which to this day remains surprisingly unexamined. This article analyses this unconventional project and examines its objectives. Klein's experimental flânerie invites us to a renewed urban experience that relies on a set of distinctive formal characteristics. I will therefore discuss this project's exploration of mediatic combinations, and its resistance to narrative closure, in order to demonstrate that Klein tries to reinvent the way to engage with art and to write history.

Making Convergence Work in the Newsroom: A Case Study of Convergence of Print, Radio, Television and Online Newsrooms at the African Media Matrix in South Africa During the National Arts Festival

Verweij, P. — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 03:01:19 PST

The process of convergence has had significant effects on and consequences for the working habits and roles of journalists. This article, based on observations at The Times and Die Burger, and on a convergence experiment at The School of Journalism at Rhodes University, will focus on this impact. Convergence has transformed the journalist from `a lonely wolf' into a (multimedia) team player. Enhancing at the same time the limits of decision making in the production of news by reporters and editors. The success of this transformation is more related to the social structure and organization of the newsroom, than to technology. Converged newsrooms offer more opportunities for the public to be informed and involved in a story, and offer the reporter and editor more integrated tools to tell the story.

Videogame as Media Practice: An Exploration of the Intersections Between Play and Audiovisual Culture

Roig, A., San Cornelio, G., Ardevol, E., Alsina, P., Pages, R. — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 03:01:19 PST

Our aim in this article is to explore videogames as new media practices, not in isolation but as part of broader media transformations related to the development of current digital technologies. Videogames are the product of a hybridization process between audiovisual media forms and game cultures, rapidly gaining popularity among kids and the elderly population. The experience of audiovisual consumption and aesthetic pleasure is enhanced by interactive and game amusement components not found in previous audiovisual genres such as cinema or TV. In fact, videogames situate `play' at the core of the audiovisual experience, introducing innovative changes in audiovisual production and reception patterns. Our proposal is that videogames introduce a new relationship between subject and representation that goes far beyond the `spectatorship' position, pointing to a playful relationship with images that may be useful for understanding new forms of media practices. Videogames, thus, as a new media practice, can be seen as an exponent of greater change not only regarding how media are produced and consumed, but also in the way leisure is organized and in the role of play in our everyday life.

The Causes of Youths' Low News Consumption and Strategies for Making Youths Happy News Consumers

Huang, E. — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 03:01:19 PST

Based on the uses and gratifications theory and the Delphi technique, this study did an in-depth investigation among 28 college and high school students on youths' rationales behind their news consumption behavior. The study concludes that, in years to come, the news industry needs to realize a true convergence online by providing to the younger generation an experience of consuming multimedia news that is customizable and relevant to them with an opportunity for participatory journalism.

Book Review: Tanja Storsul and Dagny Stuedahl (eds). Ambivalence towards Convergence: Digitalization and the Media Age. Goteborg: Nordicom, 2007. 251 pp, ISBN 978--91--89471--50--4

Charles, A. — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 03:01:19 PST