Corporate Strategies in Media Convergence

This study is a historical documentation of the recent trends of Sony’s and Samsung’s engagement in the cultural industries mainly by examining convergence between their own hardware and software to ascertain whether this trend is confirmation that Sony and Samsung play pivotal roles in the cultural market. This chapter investigates the cause of the changes and growth of Sony and Samsung, and it discusses the similarities and differences between them, with a focus on corporate policies and business strategies in convergence. In particular, it articulates the ways in which changing corporate policies have played a critical role in the growth of local-based transnational cultural corporations, because what makes them different from other firms is their approach to corporate policies of convergence.

Playing as Producing

The main goal of this chapter is to explore the dynamics and interactions between foreign producers, media technologies, and local consumers in the process of globalization through a discussion of the localization of digital games. As digital games have become global entertainment products, the game industry has encountered various lingual and cultural challenges in the process. The content of digital games can be changed more easily and many game players are able to create objects or modify the game world to express their programming abilities or identities. The game industry takes advantage of digital technologies and player modding practices to overcome language and cultural barriers. Modding and other localization practices, such as translation and local packaging, imply the convergence of the global and the local cultures (i.e. glocalization) as well as the producers and consumers (i.e. prosumers).

Call Centers, India, and a New Politics

The establishment of myriad Customer service Centers, or as colloquially known, Call Centers have become a much accepted reality now in India. The country known for its assimilative nature has also painfully adopted it, though not quite got adapted to its demands. This much appreciated system by the parents of young students leaves them agape at the amount of salary it promises in comparison to their children’s educational qualifications. Call Centers have become a major hub for any intermediate passed out youngster, with dreamy eyes, full of ambitions, and passions to win the world at any cost. In the present chapter an attempt is made to interrogate the relative benefits and weigh them with the demerits that it has accumulated on the loyal workers. The key theme of the chapter is the analysis of subtle politics in the engagement of these young souls which steals their youthful charisma, vivacious spirit, zeal and vigor in return of some rupees which neither the beneficiary can enjoy nor utilize. A cultural interpretation of modernization, progress and development with a focus on the sustained core-periphery relation in a theoretically imagined world economy finds its place into the rubric of chapter. It interrogates the motives of western countries (or at least the cause behind such accusation) to sustain their monopolistic cultural imperialism through multifarious means, as evidenced in the case of Call centers in India.

Exploring the Diffusion of Mobile Phone among Zimbabwean Migrants in Botswana

From the early 2000s, the population mobility from Zimbabwe has drastically increased due to the collapse of the national economy and political instability. While the Zimbabwean migrants in Botswana have experienced horrific social, economic, and political difficulties, the mobile phone adoption rate among them has skyrocketed. Based on the theory of diffusion of innovations, this study investigates the influence of mobile phone diffusion among Zimbabwean migrants at the individual, community, and governmental levels.

New-Media-Based Attention Implosion and Television Publicness in the Era of Internet-TV Convergence

This chapter discusses how television captures and organizes the attention of the mass public in the age of media convergence. It is argued that media proliferation and technological convergence have led to a fragmented audience. Paradoxically, audience fragmentation also provides the condition for the powerful return of collective attention in the case of new-media-based attention implosion. This chapter uses the case of the extraordinary (online) popularity of television drama character Brother Laughing in Hong Kong to illustrate the phenomenon of new-media-based attention implosion and the dynamics behind it. The analysis shows that attention implosion is generated by audience members’ time-space shifting practices and key individuals’ organizational efforts, both facilitated by the new media. It led to the formation of an interpretive public surrounding the fictional character. Implications of the phenomenon on our understanding of the relationship between television, social life, and collective public attention are discussed.

New Imagined Community by Cultural Participation

Although the preservation of cultural heritage has always been a primary task of cultural policy in many countries, the idea of combining digital technology and cultural heritage was almost entirely unknown as recently as 1990. It is undeniable that digital technologies have played an important part in our lives. In the case of Taiwan, the government has been working on digitizing cultural heritage by launching National Digital Archives Program since 2002. Most scholarship has focused either on technical practices or the economic value of such practices. Scanty attention has been paid to the relationship between digital cultural heritage, cultural citizenship, and one’s imagined community. In other words, the application of digital technology onto cultural heritage has been largely unmapped in terms of identity formation. This study explores the social and cultural implication of the combination of technology and heritage. When heritage meet contemporary technology, how does it shape and what does it implicate for one’s cultural identity and imagined community?

The Emerging Media Exchange in the Cultural Regionalization of Asia

This chapter focuses on the emerging media regionalization that takes place in Asia in 2000s. Japan and Hong Kong used to be the dominant cultural exporters commercializing their national media products to the nearby Asian markets. The recent market success of Korean wave and the gradual opening of Chinese market bring media regionalization to a different level. The chapter selects three cases to present the detailed image of cultural standardization in Asia’s media regionalization. The first centers on the circulation of media text in television drama, emphasizing on Korean wave and the particular TV series, Boys Over Flowers. The second case discusses Taiwanese popular music and its influence on Mandopop in the Chinese communities. The last case studies the regionalization of online game from China. This case examines the localization of Chinese online game, Westward Journey Online II. Chinese online games initially begin with the imitation of Korean game but later form their national branding based upon a mixture of global and local cultural elements that speak to the largest group of online game consumers in the pan-Asian market.

Global Media and Information Ethics

Any meaningful debate on global media and information ethics is burdened with the complexity of dissecting various disjunctive dynamics that characterize the complexity of emerging global relationships. The authors argue that the emerging global phenomenon problematizes the Cartesian plane of oppositions – center vs. periphery, North vs. South, global vs. local, which has been the forte of globalization studies until recently. It is against this background that the authors seek to examine challenges of having a global information and media ethics. The authors will pay attention to the antagonistic mechanics informing the domination and rejection of intangible ethical principles. In this discussion, they will be guided, partly, by Alleyne’s (2009, p. 384) postulation on the need to pay attention to “changes in state power, the relationship between the market and the state, and modifications in the ideological assumptions about the optimum form of world order.”

Sharing Bites on Global Screens

Snack culture is the new phenomenon that shrinks media cultural products and can be easily shared on social networks of the Internet. Thus, it can be consumed in a reduced amount of time circulating instantly all over the globe. These tiny and snappy materials are changing people’s habits, transforming passive viewers into active users, and promoting equal access to all, and requiring no professional skills. Viewers now can also produce cultural and social content in widespread virtual communities (based on the Web 2.0) that are increasingly interactive. This chapter presents and analyses a variety of media snacks that form and circulate as snack culture; it also elucidates some of those current changes that are shaping today’s relationship between society and media.

The Three Cs of Key Music Sector Trends Today

Drawing upon a recent examination of contemporary trends in the music industry, this chapter explores the evolving relationships between new digital media technologies, socio-economic factors and media cultures as we enter the second decade of the twenty-first century. We examine the implications of these trends with regard to three fundamental concepts in the analysis of culture, namely commodification, concentration and convergence. We draw upon these concepts to guide our study of a music industry that is widely perceived as a leading site for new media developments. In this study we question the extent to which the music industry is experiencing transformations or significant disruptions resulting from technological innovations, or whether it is actually much more a case of ‘business as usual’ in the commercial music industry. Thus, this chapter interrogates and challenges the dominant framing of current debates around the notion of ‘crisis’ in the music industry. Furthermore, it considers how the concepts of commodification, concentration and convergence remain crucial to an informed and thorough understanding of current trends in the media and cultural industries.