Category: Academic

Convergent Journalism & Education Convention

christy

Fresh from the The Convergence Newsletter is news that the Broadcast Education Association’s 2006 convention is on “convergence”: Convergence Shockwave: Change, Challenge and Opportunity. It runs from April 26-29 in Las Vegas. There are over 20 sessions dedicated to discussing convergence in many forms: content, management, advertising, culture, technology, curriculum and teaching. There are two plenaries:

“Convergence and Content Plenary: Convergent Journalism: The State of the Field” which includes a CNN reporter, convergent journalism manager, audience expert and researcher on the panel

“Convergence and Technology Plenary: Leading the Convergence Shockwave” which includes execs from Adobe, Apple, AVID and Panasonic.

Other sessions include:

Hyperlocalism in the Age of Convergence: Something Old is New Again

The Convergence Shockwave: A Swapshop of Teaching Ideas

An International Perspetive on Convergence: From Americas to Europe

Managing Change Internally while Seizing Market Opportunities in the Convergence Shockwave

Public Media’s Convergence Shockwave

Cultural Convergence: The Challenge for Educators and Students

Convergence Trajectories: Different Paths to Integration

 

Marc Ruppel’s latest paper

christy

Marc Ruppel is a researcher into what he terms “cross-sited narratives”. He has put one of his talks online, a presentation that was part of his PhD Comprehensive Exam in Digital Studies, University of Maryland College Park. Marc terms:

cross-sited narratives “as multi-sensory stories told across two or more diverse media (film, print literature, web, video games, live performance, recorded music, etc.)”.

He also notes that these narratives “challenge the idea that convergence results in less media”. Yay! I am amazed at how many people think media has only one direction! Marc talks about CSNs as being complex systems with a “centrix”, “simplex” and “complex”. I’m still thinking about these, need some more information Marc. He says that there are two types of CSNs: Horizontal and Vertical.

Horizontally Cross-Sited Narratives: “similar to the horizontal integration of a market, HCSNs function in the expansion of a narrative across media”.

Marc gives examples from The Matrix and the ARG I Love Bees. The other, Verticals, are explained through Mark DanielewskiÂ’s House of Leaves (a book I still haven’t finished reading — is it possible to ever finish reading it?!).

Vertically Cross-Sited Narratives: “similar to a vertical market share, VCSNs traffic in emptied signifiers and sustained signifieds that are encoded with an awareness of the other media invoked by the narrative (not a metatext, but a metanetwork)”.

[Question Marc: how does VCSNs differ to collage?] Finally, Marc also discusses what he terms:

Migratory Cues: “any sign within one simplex that can be found in another simplex; a signal towards another medium—the means through which various narrative paths are marked by an author and located by a user through activation patterns”.

CTAs! Call-to-Actions! The referral system! Cool. I’ve got a post about such calls/referrals/cues coming up soon. Well done Marc. This would have to be one of the most thoughtful works on cross-media narratives I’ve read yet. Good stuff.

Ruppel, M. (2005) ‘Learning to Speak Braille:Convergence, Divergence and Cross-Sited Narratives’, Things as They Are?… [Online] Available at: http://things.wordherders.net/archives/005458.html

Worldwide Map of Cross-Media Researchers

christy

Cross-Media Researchers Map picInspired by a map created for botmasters, I’ve created a Frappr map for us! The map allows you do add a pin (like Google Earth, indeed, running with data supplied by Google). So, every cross-media researcher can add themselves to this map. We’ll see then just how many are in Europe! Add away!

http://www.frappr.com/crossmediaresearchers

Note: As soon as I figure it out too, I want to change the pins to indicate “industry” and “academic” rather than male and female. Also, the suburb locations (longitude & latitude) are not accurate, but the city, state and country are — which is all we need.