 So dear learners what we are going to talk about today is something called convergence. Convergence is if you look at that slide here what an idea surgery that what an idea surgery is an idea idea mobile ad which actually encompasses this feeling or this concept of convergence very well let's go and have a look at it first. Convergence is a combination of I mean it's a it's a Latin word for two entities coming together when two or more entities come together it is called converger which is where convergence has come in from. Nicholas Negroponte was one of the first persons who actually defined and represented convergence in a in a diagrammatic format. For example he talked of broadcast and motion picture industry print and publishing industry and computer industry. When these three circles converge when they when they intersect he termed it as convergence. Let's go ahead. These are the first the the common ground and starting point for defining the convergence and the definition of convergence is essentially a description of digitalization. What we are doing today in today's world in the media field is basically digitalization. There are several studies that have taken place on convergence and several researches that have been done. For example Swedish agency for innovation systems called Vinova presented a similar model in 2001 pointing out four areas of convergence services electronic appliances networks and market convergence. Convergence of services occurs when information traditionally connected with a certain media channel is provided to alternative media channels. For example the one television channel broadcasts other television channels programs. If you look at the Sony sometimes or even Z sometimes broadcasts Sony's programs or if there is a very very popular program that is coming on another channel it is broadcast by by another channel that is called convergence and basically convergence of services. Electronic convergence is of course what we see today in the electronic world in the media world that electronic gadgets keep on coming together and together. For example if you look at the mobile phone that is probably the most convergent gadget today we use. Initially when we started using a mobile phone it was just for making calls and sending SMSs but today we are using it for sending messages we are using it for typing world files we are using it for creating pop-up presentations we are using 3G to watch video using it for even for shooting and uploading an MMS these are the kind of convergent technologies that we are using today. The third area of convergence is the network convergence network convergence involves the integration of separate infrastructures and a distribution of services from other areas than the services traditionally distributed over a certain network for example internet now internet encompasses a network what is internet basically if you look at it in a very very down-to-earth manner internet is an international network of computers clearly but then what does it do it it encompasses lands vans and then wide area networks and a city a country and ultimately becomes an internet and this is what happens when you're talking of a network convergence market convergence this is also a very important convergence even though we are not dealing with market convergence directly as a media person but as a media person as a media student you have to understand that even in the media market there's a lot of convergence happening so when it occurs when actors in the market move to adjacent areas which has not been previously been in the primary areas of for example reliance now look at reliance reliance is primarily a telecommunication company when it came into i mean i'm not talking of reliance industries in terms of petroleum i'm talking of reliance industries in terms of communication came in as a telecommunication company but what is reliance doing now reliance is having big flicks that is the video rental channel they're having a big cinema which produces and big theaters where they have distributed films so they are into everything every form of communication and distribution of films that is what is market convergence so what would ideally be a newsroom convergence i get a story from one of the reporters and i use the same story where i get a downlink from the satellite i get a video feed from the satellite capture it use that that feed to create a story for the television i also quickly write a story or type a story for tomorrow's edition of newspaper i write a script for the radio and at the same time i am capable of creating a web page and i use that that capability to create a website i mean or add pages to my website all this ideally should be the the method by which newsroom convergence should happen but we really don't have that right now in our country maybe in the future very near future i think it'll happen so some other studies of convergence for example gordon has identified five types of convergence ownership tactical structural information gathering and storytelling in some of these theories when we when we're going to look at this convergence it'll overlap but we have to talk of the studies that have been done ownership convergence of course would be you know compared to merging of two companies tactical convergence is a form of cross promotion so when i promote your your program and you promote my program that becomes a tactical convergence structural convergence is also very important what is happening is today i cannot uh claim to be a reporter only a reporter who will carry uh who will wear a jaba and a jola and go out in the field and write a story by hand and give it to my audience that is not enough as a reporter i should be able to do several other things at the same time as an editor i should be able to edit the story put it put together a page maybe and uh due to this kind of skill sets multiple skill sets that are necessary what is happening is within the news industry there is a lot of restructuring happening or in terms of job structures so if i join a newspaper organization as a reporter i may not be just a reporter but i might also have to go to the office put together the page that i'm supposed to put uh suppose i'm covering sports speed then it's not enough to just cover the sports and give it away to an editor i might have to go there and put together the page in either quark express or page maker or in design and keep it ready for tomorrow's edition that kind of structural convergence is happening in today's organizations information gathering i i don't know how it happens everywhere in the in the country but in a city like Mumbai this is a very prevalent form of convergence what happens is in a city like Mumbai you can't be in all the places and i cannot ask if i am the organization i cannot keep reporters all over the city because just to travel for one end one end of the city to the other end of the city either east west or north south it takes more than one two hours so i the news is happening in the south and i'm in the north i cannot cover it what happens is especially during the night time what happens is these uh reporters they uh after the shift is over by about three o'clock or four o'clock they correct in a central place or uh what they do is they do camera to camera transfer so uh if you have got a story and i don't have a story you will give the camera or you just plug in your wires and transfer the story to me which is why if you see in in today's news news broadcasts sometimes if you switch channels with the remote you'll see exactly the same picture in several news channels there's no exclusivity in pictures everybody breaks the same news and with the same pictures maybe the narration is different but why the same pictures because you've got information gathering convergence that is what happens storytelling convergence about new ways of to present information in different publishing channels now this is very common i think media students will know how to convert a story for a different if i i am from a political party or if i am if my newspaper is affiliated to a political party i'll have to frame my story according to that party's convenience if i'm from another opposition party or another party then i'll have to frame my story according to that particular uh you know affiliation so storytelling convergence always there some um this is a very good model of convergence what what this actually talks about is it's a convergence continuum there's always a continuation it's not uh you can't segregate one type of convergence from another type of convergence so you've got cross promotion and cloning and co-opetition and contention and convergence they are all together and they all all you know interact with each other to form a complete convergence you can't you can't really you know segregate each type of convergence there are some explanations about these convergence this cross promotion is defined when partners cooperate cloning is when is the state where material is republished into several channels so maybe i have syndicated a column which is repeated by another channel or a simple example like Mahabharat serial which started off with one channel and is being rebroadcast in several channels and it's still very popular co-opetition is something very important to each to all know now though it is in a very small uh point uh here in this particular presentation but it's an important phenomenon it is cooperation as well as competition at the same time so what happens is i uh at a at a higher level i cooperate with you so for example if i want to place an ad in the newspapers about something we together pool the resources and place a single ad for all of us so if you and me are our rivals in the field but at an upper level we put together some resources and place an ad in the newspaper so we so we spend less so if a newspaper ad is going to cost me say 50 000 rupees it costs you 25 it costs me 25 in the field we'll be rivals we'll be rivals we'll be competing with each other so it's actually cooperative competition and this is happening every day now in the field and we should look at it as a student of media content sharing i think we already talked about this content sharing when we are talking of information gathering the same as that and full convergence when we actually you know merge according to authors at the level cooperating partners share a central news desk so in a way somehow like uh times of india sharing a desk with the mumbai mirror with economic times and you know uh so i have a single desk where i get stories from my reporters and share the stories with all the newspapers that i have in my group loss on borders is another researcher suggests another model where convergence is a concept as well as a process both it's a concept as well as a process so how how does it work uh convergence as distribution of content to blending of traditional new media which leads to those uh those opening to new opportunities in the media for example what you're seeing is today a lot of folk media is used for communicating uh concepts if you look at some of the channels they are actually using puppets and cartoons this is the kind of convergence we are talking about traditional one-way communication model is modified to include a two-way communication so if i've got a reality show uh going on or if i've got a new story going on for example in mumbai there's a channel called ibnlokmat it's a marathi channel and they have a they have a program every night called uh atza prashna today's question so there is a question and what they do is they ask the viewers to send in their sms every day and based on that sms they keep on discussing so today if i'm discussing something and the sms say that the answer is either yes or no it's not anything more but based on that the panel discussion keeps on changing that is uh the that two-way communication that is happening this is the awesome mod uh borders model convergence source is the computer and the internet and you've got medium wireless print cable and radio television satellite that is the way it is operating now this is a picture which shows actually that everything is now converging towards a mobile phone clearly which garden has also defined convergence as content creation i'm going to go quickly through this because it's kind of repeat of the previous ones so content creation you have to now be able to create content so you have to learn word and from what you should be able to take the data and the content to quark express or maybe something else audio video everything that you have to do or embed into the web page content distribution we are we know that we already have access to the internet it's a worldwide web and the distribution is happening so fast that today's news i'm recording today on the 2nd of may and news that osama bin laden has been killed has already reached us and he has that in islam there's somewhere in islam so that is what content distribution convergence is about content consumption is also very important because most consumers do not use digital display devices they still use traditional media but cable tv gives internet access but to computers we can already see some key technology developments widespread use of content management systems are there wireless internet access all these are actually having a taking place one very important but a slightly neglected the piece of technology is ntnn ip tv ip tv actually comes through your broadband model which you have router which you get from your telephone company from where you get your broadband internet connection the same model is used to give you tell television connectivity and they actually give a very very good quality television broadcast signal where i already talked about this but uh word convergence can be applied to these companies their operations the way employees do their jobs uh using this photograph we can identify at least five different types of convergence again there's a repeat ownership only three groups as i know of have some kind of convergence times sakhar and lohmad we also have convergence in tactics traditional media companies begin engaging in a variety of activities that we can call tactical convergence where daily tips and information spot news photography enterprise reporting events public service these are the kind of places where they have use convergence structure is changing as we have already seen organization structures are bound to change with the new technology coming in information gathering we already seen we when you talk of backpack journalism like i told you i mean uh what we have is a backpack or a sack where you have got a camera and a laptop and a mobile phone and a data card and a tripod that's it you are a complete studio in itself that is the kind of convergence we are talking about what is happening because of that uh is that the quality of journalistic writing is deteriorating very fast because that race for breaking news is actually killing the quality of journalistic writing presentation of course we have a storytelling convergence when you talk of convergence you also have to talk of divergence we cannot ignore divergence when you're talking about convergence because what is divergence divergence is uh today when i when i watch news on television i'm not completely satisfied because we know that television keeps on repeating the same news because they don't have enough content video television is all about video content so since i'm not satisfied i immediately go to the website and look for news on the on facebook or twitter or whatever website i am still not satisfied i still wait for tomorrow morning's newspaper so that uh i i know i wait for tomorrow's morning then i uh switch on to my mobile phone and send some messages to my friends have you heard about this go to twitter and see if twitter has got anything go to youtube and see if youtube has got some videos what we have actually in today's audience's hands is divergent medium and which is where we are talking of when you talk of convergence we also have to talk of divergence and just the way we media people have got uh technology the audience also has got technology and we should remember that and we need to be able to create content for all possible distribution devices interactive niche publishing encourages divergence without what we have been seeing that because interactivity means you've got uh uh technology at the same time the technology behind the services and production in the different channels are converging so in production technology there is convergence whereas from the consumer's point of view there is divergence which is what we are talking about one excellent example of divergence is blogging should we treat blog as uh as an authentic journalism article there are a lot of views about this but ideally a blog is written from the heart whereas a journalistic writing is written from the brain and uh frankly speaking a journalist has to authentic a story tomorrow if i ask a journalist to to prove what he has said the journalist usually ideally has to have a proof of what a documentation or something which will uh show that what he's talking is truth a blogger has no identity if i if i decide that i should use your name tomorrow i can use your name tomorrow and create a blog and nobody will know who i am unless there's a police case and there's a cyber cell investigating from the ip address but ideally uh blog writing need not be need not be journalism because there are some good journalists who are writing their blogs citizen journalism or participatory journalism again if it is authenticated is journalism otherwise it is not well so media convergence is an ongoing process and if one process ends another process immediately starts taking over that good process so what are the implications this is something which you have to think about what are the implications of convergence what are the benefits of convergence for people what are the benefits for the media these are the questions that you have to study and answer some very excellent examples of how information and communication technology has been used and how the convergent technologies have been used excellent example there's one hole in the wall experiment you might have heard of this if you search the net you'll definitely get it dr sugata mitra from iit madras had an idea there was a hole in the wall if you can see this there was a hole in the wall what he did was he kept a computer screen and a keyboard and mouse and kept the pc inside and there was a slum area outside the wall and he just kept it open free anybody could use it and surprisingly what happened is the children from the slum area learned computers on their own that is how convergent technology helps you it actually worked that way ms swaminathan research foundation they have got something called village knowledge center and village research center this is a chain based firm what they do is they they have got an excellent mobile experiment where they have distributed they have created and distributed tata indicom phones and they have actually created a software whereby one single click will give the information about the market rates the weather whether it's going to rain today or it's going to rain in that area or not that is what convergence does to us negros nagarapante who actually first defined in one of the first slides we have seen that he is the one who defined convergence in those intersecting circles he has actually worked in india he has come to uh india in in a village called khaira which is near near kharzat and see this is the kind of village 20 houses and 200 people what he did was he distributed these computers they can be charged by hand actually you know they don't have a battery and one computer one laptop per child and he taught he teaches computer to these children in a very very small remote village and they learn very fast so what what what problems do we have with convergence social responsibility theory we know there is something called social responsibility theory which is supposed to there's a media is supposed to be socially responsible what we see today in the media uh i think you should look at it and talk about it framing theory you know that uh you can frame a story as you want so i can uh with one incidence i can change the outlook of the whole story completely to suit my own purpose or my organization's purpose gatekeeping do i have any kind of gatekeeping gatekeeping now because if you're talking of gatekeeping when you've got so many people sharing the same video what is there to get key backpack journalism i've already talked about backpack journalism breaking news this phenomenon is actually breaking the back of journalism and of course attention to details the tendency today is to simply google and what your results you get you use for your news story which is a dangerous phenomenon which is uh you know has come up because of convergence so the questions that you need to answer now is is there really content convergence in the media who benefits from it the media organizations or the people if you took a look at some of the examples if chandra babu naidu's one window phenomenon because he is the one who you know digitalized digitalized all the land records in andhra pradesh and thus you could get records from one single window iris city c dot co dot in the railways site is one of the best sites india has uh best uh b2c sites india has uh a completely convergent website we other also have some other problems like convergence and isolation i have a an ipod which i carry along with me and once i put those ear plugs in my in my ear and start listening to the songs i'm cut off from the whole world i'm isolated from the world and the world is isolated from me that is one problem we have to talk about marginalization so we have got something called digital divide convergence the more convergent technology is coming up the more people who don't have access to that technology are being you know sidelined that kind of marginalization is uh happening so internet is a myth or reality i i think now it is a reality but we still have to look at the convergent part of it and the communities of course mobile phones we are using now with 3g networks coming in i think it's going to be the medium of choice for even the media companies because what you have now is face-to-face conversations you have a video downloading and possibly news broadcast instead of television channels i can watch news while traveling and on the spot news immediate news real-time news which is what convergence is going to do to mobile phones and i think that the next five years are going to be very interesting in terms of the delivery of content over media which media are we going to really use well that's what this ad i like the ad when i saw the ad because it actually talks of convergence when the hero actually uses a mobile phone to teach several children sitting beside you know that is the ideally that should be the convergent convergent medium that we have to use for education more than entertainment