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66 COMMUNICA TION THEORY
Table 3.1 Digitalization as the basis of convergence, wider
bandwidth and multi-media (the ability to combine image, sound
and text)
Broadcast (wireless Network (wireless
and wired) and wired)
Technology Digital TV, radio on-line, Older network technology:
news text on-line, DVDs ‘digital-enabled’ ISDN,
mobile telephony, from
analogue to digital
Altogether newly ‘born
digital’ technologies: the
Internet, mobile text, mobile
fax, mobile data, mobile
video text, networked PDAs
(Personal Digital
Assistants). Providing new
services: home shopping,
banking, gambling,
searchable databases
Medium-channels Electromagnetic waves, Satellite, microwave,
satellite, microwave, copper and optical fibre
copper and optical fibre cable
cable
Policy Broadcasters pressure Networking makes
governments to relax possible the provision of
policies, because more information and
‘everyone’ can be a entertainment that is
broadcaster otherwise commodified by
broadcasters and telcos
(telecommunications
corporations) and now
provided for free. MP3,
movies, news – dilutes
the user-pays dimension
of media
Advertising not as powerful,
but its promise has caused
losses for broadcasters

For convergence theorists, technologies, media and policies have
each become more interdependent across both broadcast and network
architectures of communication:

No medium today, and certainly no single media event, seems to do its cul-
tural work in isolation from other media, any more than it works in isolation
from other social and economic forces. What is new about new media
comes from the particular ways they refashion older media and the ways in
which older media refashion themselves to answer the challenges of new
media. (Bolter and Grusin, 1999: 15)