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CONVERGENCE IN INDIAN MEDIA: A NEW PARADIGM OF ICT
Dr. Smita Vashishta1, Ms Neema Negi2
1Assistant Prof. Dept of Journalism and Mass communication, Dev Sanskriti Vishwavidalaya, Hardwar,U.K
2Teaching Associate, Dept of Journalism and Mass communication Dev Sanskriti Vishwavidalaya, Hardwar,U.K
ABSTRACT
With the growing technological advancement, Indian media has evolved a new aspect of
digitalizing the content. Media convergence brings together the “three Cs”-computing,
communications and content. Computing, with the use of Internet; communication with the
unique feature of interactivity and content; which is young and fresh. Convergence of the content
along with text, video, audio or rather multimedia has changing the scenario of Journalism at
India. Researcher has tried to would explore the various dimensions of convergence at globe with
India in particular, and how it is posing a threat to old media and emerging as an alternative
media.
Key words: Computing, communication, content, technological advancement, convergence,
multimedia
INTRODUCTION:
Print and Television journalism at India has
its own history. Print changed with increased
circulations and types of printing and on the
other hand Television changed the lifestyle
of people by broadcasting the variety of
programmes both by Doordarshan and
private channels. Today with the emergence
of dot com, the perspective of both the
medium has been changed. Every thing
which required habit of sitting at one place
has been vanished. The reason is every
media house has developed a website which
has evolved the technology of convergence.
Media Convergence is a phenomenon that
involves the interlocking of computing and
information technology companies,
telecommunication networks and content
providers from the various media platforms
like magazines, newspapers, radio,
television, films and the likes.
This paper is organized into five sections.
The first makes the distinction of
convergence with reference to media,
second give the picture of convergence data
with reference to the world and India, third
deals with the Indian media and
convergence fourth as how it is emerging as
a threat to print and electronic media; and
the last section offers conclusion of the
paper.
Most theorists agree that convergence is
coming together of telecommunications;
computing; and broadcasting into a single
digital bit stream (Collins, 1998; Gates,
2000).
And when discussing convergence in the
context of information and communication
technologies (ICTs) it is important to realize
that convergence have almost captured and
effected media market of the world. The
merging of computers and media has
recently led to the development of virtual
reality applications. Thus convergence can
be viewed as ‘coming together of different
equipment and tools for producing and
distributing news’ Convergence as ‘flow of
content across multiple media platforms’
(Jenkins, 2006)
Convergence can be understood in four
dimensions (Graham Meikles) technological
—the combination of computing,
communications and content around
networked digital media platforms;
industrial—the engagement of established
media institutions in the digital media space,
and the rise of digitally-based companies
such as Google, Apple, Microsoft and others
as significant media content providers.
(Sherman Young) social—the rise of social
network media such as Facebook, Twitter
and YouTube, and the growth of user-created
content; and textual—the re-use and
remixing of media ,where stories and media
content (for example, sounds, images,
written text).
Many newspapers have also pursued
convergence with the internet. Vevento one
of the largest media groups in Spain has
expanded its size through the acquisition of
several newspapers, four television stations
and three radio stations together with online
companies. (Dal Yong Jin, 2013).
Technology has changed the balance of
power between producer and consumer of
news. News websites have massively
changed their style of writing to allow quick
fast hits of information by using short, to
point headlines followed by a brief summary
of events. (Lionel Barber).
Almost anything could be accessed through
a single website, from music videos, comedy
sketches, feature films and peoples personal
reviews of a subject with the help of Internet
and smart phones. This is broadly classified
as New Media too, which allow their
audiences to have with news content –
consuming content, influencing content, or
passing it beyond the news site.( Itai
Himelboim,)
CONSUMPTION LEVEL: India Vs
Worldwide
From 1990’s the growth of the Internet has
been rapid, spreading its tentacles to almost
every corner of the globe. YouView service
collaboration between the BBC, ITV,
Channels 4 and 5, BT, TalkTalk and Arquiva
– is going to mark a massive advance in the
much vaunted convergence of television and
the internet. (Jim Chisholm).
Britain has become a gadget-obsessed
nation, watching more television online,
spending more on internet shopping and
using smartphones and tablets to access the
web more heavily than any of the world's
leading economies (mark sweney, 2012).
Scotland has shown a remarkable change.
Scots are increasing their searching or
reading of the internet on their phones – the
proportion of those in Scotland that access
the web on their mobile was 44% in 2013,
an increase of 13 percentage points. (Phill
Miller, 2013).
North Americans almost 69% of the adult
online user use internet to watch TV.
( Reineka Retsma, 2013)
Singapore is the top adopter of internet
enabled TV and has the highest smartphone
penetration rate in the world at 74%
followed by Hongkong and United Arab
Emirates at 73%and 64% respectively. (Koh
Boon Hwee, 2012).It is estimated that by
2017, the average mobile user(world wide)
will watch 10 hours of video, listen to 15
hours of music, make five video calls and
download 15 apps each month. (Cecilia
Kang2013)
CONVERGENCE AND INDIAN
MEDIA:
Many Voices, One World’ or the ‘MacBride
Report’ as it is popularly called was a result
of a world-wide research conducted by
UNESCO to address the disparity of
communication between the ‘first world’ and
the ‘third world’ countries or the developed
and under-developed or developing Nations.
And this disparity and imbalances in
communication tended to marginalize the
developing world, which included India. A
Balance of Payments crisis in 1991 that
brought India to the brink of bankruptcy
ushered in the age or economic reforms. One
of the biggest beneficiaries of these reforms
was the Telecommunications and the
Information Technology sector. (Mangesh
Manohar Karandikar, 2013).
But this reform not only gave a boon to the
sale of computers but to the use of
technology too as a result internet users at
India increased and it is estimated that the
number of Internet users would cross 300
million by 2015. In any case, even 100
million Internet users along with 600 million
mobile phone users must be something that
media houses can no longer ignore.
Vijayakumar Radhakrishnan.
Not only the urban population but the use of
internet with the help of cheap services
increased. The use of Internet in rural India
has jumped from 12.1 million users in
December 2010 to 24 million in December
2012, a rise of more than 50%. The rise in
the rural Internet usage is significant
because there has been a rise in the literacy
levels in India especially in rural India. In
fact the improvement in literacy rate in rural
area is two times that in urban areas
(Chandramouli, 2011). Thus the increased
use of internet helped the media groups to
present their work through websites and
web sites for current news, and the papers
were thus induced to put more resources into
competing on the Web; this in turn led to the
addition of still more multimedia content,
such as photographs, audio, and video, as
well as blogs (essentially editorials) and
forums to attract interaction with their
readers.
The major television news channels and
newspaper houses in India have significant
online presence. They continue to attract
most of the online traffic in India. The Times
of India, the Hindu, the Tribune, Hindustan
Times, NDTV, Indian Express, IBN 7, are
the examples.
Mint, a business newspaper, not only does it
for normal interviews, but also does weekly
shows on issues on topics, and even gives a
wrap up of the top business news of the day,
just like a TV station. Similarly, Tehelka, a
weekly news magazine, has plans to take
convergence to the next level they already
do videos which are put up on YouTube,
which are then linked to their websites.
As internet penetration rises in India, the
digital video audience grew faster. Over the
years, NDTV has expanded its brand
portfolio to seize opportunities in the
‘beyond news space’ and has step-down
subsidiaries: NDTV Lifestyle, NDTV
Convergence (triple play; to exploit the
synergies between television, Internet and
mobile and owns the website ndtv.com)
CONVERGENCE AS A THREAT TO
PRINT AND ELECTRONIC MEDIA:
Converged newsrooms offer more
opportunities for the public to be informed
and involved in a story, and rather offer the
reporter and editor more integrated tools to
tell the story. Peter Verweij. Thus the
convergence has given new terms like
‘citizen’ and alternative journalism. And as a
result India is finally seeing the birth of
alternative journalism (Jo Bardoel 2001).TV
reality show, a viewer may increasingly use
the online/mobile medium to 'advo-cast'
through blogs, Facebook or Twitter by
sharing the content. Rajeev Srinivasan ,
The Internet is the medium having the most
success attracting young people to news,
something that the older media. Those who
did use online news said its attraction stems
from three characteristics :( 1) News can
arrive continuously and be accessed
anytime. (2) The choice of news providers
online is much greater than in print or
traditional broadcast. (3) Most online news
is free.
What is most intriguing is the evidence that
television rather than print is suffering most.
This is surprising because, at this point, the
Web is still largely a text-based medium. Vin
Crosbie.
Jeff Bezos, Founder of digital
conglomerate Amazon, recently bought
Washington Post for $250 million the deal
has popped up a significant question
around ‘the overlap between print and
digital’. Saloni Surti, 2013
Other new forays such as IPTV and
Mobile TV are also making waves in the
market. Recently launched IPTV
services currently have around 40,000
subscribers but this number is expected to
reach 2 million by 2013. The global mobile
TV market is also expected to grow at
CAGR 47% and India and China are
expected to lead this growth. The telecom
players worldwide have created several new
business models to tap these opportunities
Singapore telemedia services and
‘Netpreneurs’ have increased. (J.E Wilson
1998).
Graph 1.0 Data source: Source: comScore
Media Metrix. March 2011
CONCLUSION
Convergence and ICT applications currently
offer present media an opportunity to
promote and to serve the public interest.
Information and Communication
technologies can assist journalists in
becoming advocates of the public interest,
by adding depth of their coverage and
incorporating more voices into their
reporting.
Although , it is argued that market driven
media owned and controlled by big media
corporations ‘can actually improve the value
of the service, the flexibility of topics and
the competence of the contributers’ as well
as enable technological developments,
change the elitism of media professionals
and create new general awareness.
Another aspect of media convergence that
can be seen as its major drawback is what
Jenkins (2006:23) calls the ‘participation
gap’. This concept refers to the fact that
while media convergence in general has
encouraged audiences to participate in the
process of content creation, it requires
extended access to modern technologies,
familiarity with the new forms of media, as
well as developing certain skills. As a result,
certain segments of the audience arguably
remain neglected and unable to fully
participate in the new media culture.
Among the benefits of Media Convergence
it could be said that it has brought
about a sense of Post Modernism to
the field of media consumption
where the consumer is not an
audience but is also a co creator.
The emergence of citizen participation as a
strong force, demonstrated by blogging,
commenting, texting, Twitter, “new
entrants” and a wide range of other web
media platforms. Today everyone can be a
medium and an increasing number of people
want to be heard, either informally or
through serious ventures. To them the cost of
entry is zero.
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