Chapter 2: Convergence and the Reshaping of Mass Communication
"After studying this chapter you should have a broad overview of current trends in mass media, especially in concentration of ownership and conglomeration, globalization, audience fragmentation, hypercommercialization, and convergence."Â
That says it all.
We took a long time discussing this chapter, I guess? Because we had a hard time in reading Baran's book. One of the reasons why is because the parameter is set in America, but despite that problem, we still managed to understand the lesson, of course, with the help of our teacher. She made us understand all the unfamiliar terms in the book. She gives her all to explain to us what is this and what is that and because of that, we understood the lessons even though the book itself is kinda complicated.
Concentration of Ownership is when for example two media companies are owned by one person or one family. Conglomeration is when a person owns a media company and a non-media company as well, the person is called a conglomerate. Globalization is primarily large, multinational conglomerates that are doing the lion's share of media acquisitions. Audience Fragmentation, from the term itself which means fragmenting audience or a separation of audience is happening, Hypercommercialism is lead by selling more advertising on existing and new media and identifying additional ways to combine content and commercials . Convergence is when two or more media companies, converge together and become as one.
Because of this chapter, we now know why an American channel is shown worldwide, why a certain channel has sub channels, why is there different channels and why are there ads between shows and I think that sums it up.
