Convergence and Public Relations

Media convergence refers to several concurrent phenomena: the increasingly blurred boundaries between different media content and delivery formats, the ability to concentrate access to multiple communication technologies in a single device, and the concentration of cross-media ownership and control that began with deregulation in the United States in the mid-1980s. Together, these forces are transforming the global communication landscape and thus have profoundly affected the field of public relations.

From the standpoint of content and technology, much of what has been written about convergence focuses on what media scholar Henry Jenkins referred to as the “Black Box Fallacy,” the idea that we will someday rely on a single communication appliance for all of our needs. As he pointed out, this fallacy conflates the notion of media content with delivery systems. As the proliferation of devices available for home, mobile, and professional use shows, today's technological capabilities instead make it possible to produce a vast range of items that people can choose from to suit their peculiar needs in different contexts.

Media content is converging in the sense that, for example, a newspaper is just as likely (if not more so) to exist in electronic form as printed on paper; television can be broadcast, transmitted via subscriber cable systems, or uploaded to servers for on-demand online viewing. Furthermore, one might view a particular program—for example, The Daily Show—in multiple ways: on cable television, on the television channel's own website and YouTube channel, or on a dedicated site, such as Hulu. The producers can also make clips available for sharing, so that individual content producers can display them along with other content, ranging from a news aggregation site, such as The Huffington Post, to a personal blog, to social networking sites, such as Facebook. The technological convergence described above means that media consumers can view the episode or clip on devices ranging from a traditional television set to a personal computer to a mobile phone, and that viewing may happen at virtually any point in time.

Convergence has numerous implications for public relations practice and scholarship. Practitioners need to be conversant in the production and delivery of media across a broad range of platforms to effectively reach stakeholders. Audience and stakeholder engagement measures face new challenges, as stakeholders may consume organizational messages in one format or on one platform and share, comment, or organize a response via another. While this ability by users to detach the media content from its original context is often encouraged as a sign of stakeholder engagement, it also leads to a loss of control by media producers, who can no longer dictate the specific circumstances in which the media is consumed. As a reaction, consolidated media companies may place demands or restrictions on multiplatform content to maximize profits and viewership of their various properties. The long-term archiving and searchabil-ity of any media content stored electronically also means that people may be exposed to content long after it was originally produced, which can make it [Page 193]difficult for individuals or organizations to leave negative situations behind, even if they have changed considerably since the recorded incident.

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