How significant is technological convergence in the media area you have studied?
Technological convergence can be defined as the process in which multiple previously unrelated technologies come together. The advent of new technologies have affected media products and the way media corporations function in a myriad of ways. These would include but are not limited to; how social media has led to a democratization of the mass media, leading to audiences having more power, how the spread of misinformation has been made far easier through the usage of social media sites, and how advances in technology have allowed for video game franchises to incorporate and collaborate with other brands to increase their reach of audiences.
P1 - Social Media allows for direct outlets to production companies and has allowed audiences to have more power, which creates more active audiences. Case study: Sonic Movie, released in 2020, produced by Sega distributed by Paramount. Audiences came together and rallied against design choices in the movie after seeing the trailer that released in 2018. Consumers took to Twitter to voice their concerns and rallied together to form hashtags and to protest change on the design and animation styles. In Henry Jenkins' Theory of Fandom, this would be an example of how consumers were able to change the production process of a media text by coming together online and producing reaction videos to trailers and leaving comments on Sega's twitter page. In this sense, they became prosumers and led to the whole Sonic movie being redesigned.
P2 - In this modern era, the spread of fake news and hoaxes has never been easier. With everything being updated constantly and an infinite amount of knowledge at ones fingertips, social media sites like Twitter and Instagram have been the breeding ground of misinformation. Case Study: In 2021, hundreds of Twitter users were scammed out of thousands of dollars of their hard earned money through impersonation scams that misled thousands. The scam was that hackers would access verified accounts, and change their account details to those of large celebrities and millionaires, like Elon Musk, Bill Gates, and more. They would then tweet links promoting that they are allowing people to earn thousands of dollars of profits in cryptocurrency by sending money to their crypto wallets, but in the end, clicking on these links would only lead to the user losing thousands of their life savings. In total, over $10 Million was stolen off of a link from one impersonated account alone - popular internet philanthropist Jimmy Donaldson, more commonly known by his fanbase as "Mr Beast". This has led to consumers having less and less trust in media corporations like Twitter for even allowing something like this to go on for over a day, and putting the lives of their users at stake. According to Two Step Flow, this mistrust of corporations leads to audiences looking towards opinion leaders instead as a form of trusted information, as big corporations can no longer be counted on,
P3 - The advancement of computer software has allowed for video games to become increasingly more advanced. These advancements lead to games being able to use in-app-purchases to sell in-game cosmetics and make huge profits. Not only this, as players of the game are able to play online multiplayers where they can compete against other users, thousands of kilometers away from them. This is the case in games like Fortnite, a video game produced by Epic Games, released in 2017, a game featuring the battle royale format, where players load into a lobby and the last player left standing wins. Fortnite is notoriously known for their insanely huge profits through in game cosmetics, and their brilliant use of synergy in their marketing process by collaborating with hundreds of other brands and media franchises. This was allowed through technological convergence, a recent example of which would be how in 2020 they collaborated with Marvel, more specifically the Avengers franchise where in-game cosmetics like skins of Marvel characters were released into the shop for all players to purchase. According to David Gauntlets identity theory, this allows for audiences and consumers to express themselves by using these skins as a medium to show off their personality and interests to other consumers. This proved to be Fortnite most profitable collaboration to date, as reported by Epic Games themselves that they generated an estimated $4.5 Billion in revenue off of skin transactions for Marvel cosmetics alone.
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