Journal Description
Convergence aims to encourage and advance interdisciplinary modes of enquiry into the study of the histories, trajectories, impacts, practices, pleasures and creative potential of contemporary convergent media & allied innovative technologies.
Convergence is an international peer-reviewed academic journal which was set up in 1995 to address the creative, social, political and pedagogical issues raised by the advent of new media technologies. As an international research journal, it provides a forum both for monitoring and exploring developments in the field and for encouraging, publishing and promoting vital innovative research. Adopting an inter-disciplinary approach and published six times a year, Convergence has developed this area into an entirely new research field.
Topics include:
- Convergent media: histories, cross-cultural/international contexts, emergent products
- Digital creative production (music, television, art, photography, cinema, kinetic media)
- Games, gaming and ludic technologies
- Digital media distribution
- Mobile media/content
- Extended Realities (XR) – Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality and Mixed Reality
- Local and Global Media Regulation and Infrastructure (e.g. Intellectual Property (IP), censorship, policy, platforms)
- Diversity, Inclusion and representational politics
- New techno-subjects of the anthropocene – Algorithmic, Artificial Intelligence, Artificial Life
- Democratisation of the digital economy: co-production, open access and block chain and cryptocurrency
- Distributed data, networked subjects and vulnerable publics
Access all issues of Convergence on SAGE Journals Online.
Journal Feed
- by Terje ColbjørnsenConvergence, Ahead of Print. In May 2020, the music streaming service Spotify acquired exclusive rights to The Joe Rogan Experience, one of the world’s most popular podcasts. While the music streamer had started its foray into the podcasting world with acquisitions in 2019 of podcasting networks and production companies, the investment on Rogan was widely seen as a strong commitment. Rogan’s podcast is known to be humorous, crass, and often controversial. As the show dealt with highly contentious issues surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic, criticism emerged, both from medical professionals, from artists and from within Spotify. The most widely published pushback […]
- by Jon SwordsConvergence, Ahead of Print. Virtual production is increasingly seen as a way to make film and television more efficiently by harnessing the power of game engines to create unique locations and sets, offer directors more flexibility, and to cut carbon emissions. But while the technologies at the centre of virtual production are not new, their combination into filmmaking pipelines is in its infancy and the field is evolving fast. Indeed, so rapid is its evolution that pinning down what virtual production is, or might become, is a challenge in itself. What is clear, however, is that the approach is seen […]
- by Larissa HjorthConvergence, Ahead of Print. During the COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns (2020-2021), almost all facets of life were rendered digital – health, work, schooling, and logistics. In this phenomenon, not only did digital access become synonymous with social inclusion but inequalities were also amplified – particularly in the case of older adults (65 years and over). Contemporary older adults represent one of the most diverse spectrums of digital media users – spanning from technologically savvy to non-users. As the first generation of older adults to age in and through data in a data-saturated world, their understandings and experiences can teach us much about […]
- by Rob CoverConvergence, Ahead of Print. Public figures are subject to high rates of online abuse than everyday users. This article presents findings from a study on digital platforms’ higher threshold for protecting public figures in contrast to everyday users. Presenting a summary of extant literature on the experience, impact and harms of online abuse of public figures, we analyse 31 platform terms of service and related policies to understand the extent to which platforms openly differentiate between public figures and other users. We focus on platforms’ use of ‘newsworthiness’ and ‘public interest’ to justify the differential threshold. Using a cultural-informed approach, […]
- by Eedan R Amit-DanhiConvergence, Ahead of Print. In digital culture, visualizations are a prevalent and ubiquitous form of communication. A veteran journalistic tool, and an increasingly popular one in digital politics, visualizations offer informative value, attract readership, and increase engagement. Visualizations’ multimodality enables them to convey rhetoric through informative, narrative and visual strategies, making them particularly well-suited for future-oriented discourse. Despite the rise of visualization-focused scholarly work over the past decade, several analytical lacunas remain, due to visualizations’ multimodal nature and their rich array of actors, contexts and usages in the digital world. Specifically, no scholarly approach examines forward-looking visualizations comprehensively, addressing the […]
- by Evie LucasConvergence, Ahead of Print. Digitisation is arguably an inevitable feature of contemporary urban development, yet privacy issues arising from the mass data collection, transmission and processing it entails continue to be a poorly understood and contentious issue for people living in cities. This article uses a case study approach to provide new evidence of the detailed perspectives of citizens and policy makers on data privacy in rapidly digitising urban environments, with a focus on one of the UK’s most prominent smart cities: Manchester. It adds to the literature on smart cities through the application of complementary scholarship from two areas […]
- Convergence, Volume 30, Issue 1, Page 6-6, February 2024.
- by Nicoleta CorbuConvergence, Ahead of Print. The concern about misinformation in the public space has become more worrisome during the COVID-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine. In this context, we investigate what make people correctly recognize accurate information and detect misinformation about the war at the beginning of the conflict in Romania, a bordering country. By means of a national survey (N = 1006) conducted in April-May 2022, we looked for predictors of people’s capacity of navigating the information environment about the conflict. Data was gathered via an online panel conducted by Kantar as part of a cross-country project implemented in […]
- by Patricia G LangeConvergence, Ahead of Print. Ranting has a bad reputation. But is it always deserved? Online ranting has been alternatively decried for its emotion-laden hostility and praised as a beloved video genre. By exploring a qualitative corpus of YouTube rant videos, this article analyzes how problem-centric rants may serve as forms of proto civic engagement. The article shows that problem-centric rants contribute to emotional public spheres, in which emotions and logic combine to publicize personally-experienced participatory problems and to contribute to civic discourse for others similarly impacted. It reveals the discourse strategies that ranters use to persuade viewers that the site’s […]
- by Zirui ChenConvergence, Ahead of Print. In the last decade, virtual idols have become increasingly popular among young people in China with news reports estimating a fan-base of around 300 million and total industry revenues of over $35 billion in 2020 (Bloomberg, 2021). Despite these startling figures, there have been few empirical studies of virtual idol fandom. To address this lacuna, this paper explores the ways in which fans engage with the Chinese virtual idol Luo Tianyi and uses insights from Randall Collin’s (2004) work on Interactive Ritual Chains (IRC) to understand the relationship between digital fan practices and the generation of […]
- by Víctor Ávila TorresConvergence, Ahead of Print.
- by Natalia KovalyovaConvergence, Ahead of Print.
- by Zachary J McDowellConvergence, Ahead of Print. Wikipedia, despite its volunteer-driven nature, stands as a trustworthy repository of information, thanks to its transparent and verifiable processes. However, Large Language Models (LLMs) often use Wikipedia as a source without acknowledging it, creating a disconnect between users and Wikipedia’s rich framework. This poses a triple threat to information literacy, Wikipedia’s vitality, and the potential for dynamic, updated information. This article explores the interplay between representation, accessibility, and LLMs on Wikipedia, highlighting the importance of preserving Wikipedia as a space for access, representation, and ultimately advocacy in an increasingly LLM-dominated information landscape. This article contends that, […]
- by Natalia KovalyovaConvergence, Ahead of Print.
- by Amy GaetaConvergence, Ahead of Print.
- by Monique SantosoConvergence, Ahead of Print.
- by Simone DriessenConvergence, Volume 30, Issue 1, Page 304-312, February 2024. Fan practices and behaviours have increasingly moved beyond fan communities into the political, economic and cultural structures of every day life. The proliferation of social media platforms has allowed both the progressive and reactionary aspects of fandom to converge in the public sphere, drawing on similar techniques, pleasures, and practices in order to interpret the world in a culture where the boundaries between popular and political communication are blurrier than they have ever been. This special issue of Convergence explores the synergies, tensions and conflicts at play in this new cultural […]
- by Fern ConaghanConvergence, Ahead of Print. This article examines how the digitally manipulated family photograph functions as a means of understanding the temporal instability of the use and interpretations of photographic images. It begins by taking a close look at scholarly debates on how ‘credible’ the documentary value of a still photograph is, as well as how it is able to emotionally resonate with spectators. From this discussion, it becomes important to look at a key example of how an image can produce an emotional effect on a viewer; in this case, photographs of individuals’ deceased family members. While exploring how this […]
- by Chris DeFeliceConvergence, Ahead of Print. The COVID-19 pandemic disrupted the U.S. film industry, prompting major studios to release blockbuster films on streaming platforms. This study examines the impact of pandemic-related changes on the film industry by analyzing social media conversations on Twitter as a proxy for success. We introduce a novel metric to measure social word-of-mouth (sWOM) longevity for 40 movies released across different genres and franchises. Results indicate that pandemic-era films experienced shorter sWOM lifespans than pre-pandemic counterparts, and streaming releases generated shorter sWOM conversations than theatrical releases. This suggests that streaming releases risk quicker cultural obsolescence due to limited […]
- by Wan-Yun TsaiConvergence, Ahead of Print.