Media Convergence Meets Deconvergence

Abstract

This introductory chapter explains that there is a widely shared understanding of the imperative nature of media convergence, which is based on different notions connecting positive goals such as efficiency, synergy, simplification, information abundance, participation, availability and multimodality. These social imaginaries of media convergence are powerful concepts that influence political agendas and legitimize policy decisions. In this book, these privileged meanings of media convergence are challenged by presenting alternative and mostly overlooked trends and theories defined under the umbrella term of media deconvergence. The perspective of deconvergence helps to shed light on sites of tension and the simultaneity of competing forces such as coalescence and drifting apart, or linearity and discontinuity. Two of these sites of tension are analyzed more carefully in this chapter: the user’s perspective and the (de)convergence of markets.