Convergence culture in the creative industries

Abstract

• This article maps the emerging practices in media professions like journalism, advertising, marketing communications and public relations in adapting to a new global environment, characterized by an increasingly participatory media culture. Among creatives and brand managers in ad agencies `interactive advertising' is at the center of the contemporary buzz. Marketers in the cultural industries brainstorm about the potential of upstream marketing, while in public relations the opportunities of two-way symmetrical communication are explored. Editors of news publications increasingly jump on the `citizen journalism' bandwagon. All these trends are part of the same phenomenon: a convergence of the cultures of media production and consumption. In this essay, these developments are discussed in terms of their potential impact on consensual assumptions about the nature of media work, seen through the lens of the combination of individual creativity and mass production, also known as creative industries. •