Routledge De-Convergence of Global Media Industries: 47 (Routledge Research in Cultural and Media Studies)

Convergence has become a buzzword, referring on the one hand to the integration between computers, television, and mobile devices or between print, broadcast, and online media and on the other hand, the ownership of multiple content or distribution channels in media and communications. Yet while convergence among communications companies has been the major trend in the neoliberal era, the splintering of companies, de-convergence, is now gaining momentum in the communications market. As the first comprehensive attempt to analyze the wave of de-convergence of the global media system in the context of globalization, this book makes sense of those transitions by looking at global trends and how global media firms have changed and developed their business paradigm from convergence to de-convergence. Jin traces the complex relationship between media industries, culture, and globalization by exploring it in a transitional yet contextually grounded framework, employing a political economic analysis integrating empirical data analysis. Review "Dal Yong Jin’s De-Convergence provides an invaluable survey of the changing political economic landscape of the communication sectors in the 21st century. Its theoretically informed and empirically-rich analysis make it an essential text for anyone interested in the unstable and contradictory processes of corporate restructuring in the wake of three decades of ‘convergence’ and ‘ synergy’ in the fields of media, telecommunications, and ICT." Scott Fitzgerald, Curtin Graduate School of Business, Australia "This book provides a well-grounded and timely account of changes and continuities in the structures of the global communications sector. It provides many new insights on the wave of ‘de-convergence’, and its political, economic, technological, and cultural dimensions." Paschal Preston, Dublin City University, Ireland About the Author Dal Yong Jin is Associate Professor in the School of Communication at Simon Fraser University, Canada.