Page 55 - Communication Cultural and Media Studies The Key Concepts

CONVERSATION ANALYSIS

arenas in the past. As convergence is linking these traditionally separate
industries through digital networks, traditional industry structures are
no longer as relevant. Industries and markets are integrating, as well as
technologies, thus print, screen and website can now be seen as
platforms for the same content-provider.
Some of the possible consequences of these changes involve
networks supporting a range of services, new competition between
previously distinct businesses, service innovation with a focus on
customisation and flexibility, the potential for niche markets and a
greater scope for international trade in services and goods.
Convergence is causing a number of countries to revisit their
communications policies. As the same content can nowbe received
across once separately regulated media – television, radio and the
Internet – governments are considering the extent to which
regulation will need to be re-thought on order to deal with these
changes. For instance, the UK has brought together its formerly
separate regulatory bodies for telecommunications, television and
radio under one umbrella agency, Ofcom.
Changes brought about by convergence mean that the traditional
one-to-many information distribution structures will no longer be
preserved, victims of technological constraints. To continue to receive
information from singular, ‘closed’ or inaccessible sources without
entering into participatory dialogue and production will be the result
of industrial, political or cultural forces rather than technical
constraints.

CONVERSATION ANALYSIS

The search for patterned regularities in the details of conversational
behaviour. The approach has its roots in a particular branch of
sociology known as ethnomethodology, which was concerned
essentially with identifying the fundamental categories and forms of
reasoning used by members of society to make sense of their everyday
social world. As such, it was part of a continuing reaction in the
human and social sciences against the ill-considered and over-
optimistic use of quantitative and statistical methods.
True to its sociological origins, conversation analysis is interested in
verbal interaction primarily as instances of the situated social order.
Practitioners of this approach study conversation as a rich source of
observable material on howmembers of society achieve orderliness in
their everyday interactions with each other. They view conversations

40