Page 54 - Communication Cultural and Media Studies The Key Concepts

CONVERGENCE

Casey et al. (2002: 42) note that content analysis ‘tends more often to
be used as a starting point or in conjunction with other methodologies
than as a method standing alone’. Content analysis is reassuringly
quantitative, but it is best carried out in conjunction with careful
textual analysis and audience research to showhow the findings about
frequency of occurrence connect with the form in which such content
is actually experienced by readers and viewers.
See also: Methodology, Text/textual analysis

Further reading: Berger (2000); Hansen et al. (1998); Riffe et al. (1998)

CONTENT INDUSTRIES

Also known as the ‘copyright industries’. Businesses based upon the
value of intellectual property, trading in intangible, creative and
information-based products. The content industries include both
content originators (production companies, creative artists and
authors, software and games designers) and distributors or deliverers
(e.g. broadcasters, publishers, Internet service providers, telcos). The
content industries include, for instance: advertising, book publishing,
cinema, computer games, corporate communication, magazines,
music, newspapers, online publishers, performance, radio, software,
TV and video, theme parks, web design.

See also: Creative industries

CONVERGENCE

The integration of telephony, computing and media (broadcasting)
technologies, and thence the integration of the businesses, markets and
the social interactions associated with them. Responding to a
television programme (broadcasting) via an online (telecommunica-
tions) website that measures viewer responses and votes (computing) is
a basic form of convergence. Being able to do all of this via a single
device is a further possible result of convergence.
The adaptability of digital information has enabled a particular type
of industry restructuring. Service industries, including broadcasting
and telecommunications, have traditionally operated in domestic
markets with industries centred on standardised services delivered to
mass markets. These structures have been assumed in policy-making

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