Abstract
The opportunities created by the emergence of digital technology give rise to more new ways to communicate, with more people, and using more technologies. The communicable world has broadened, and the world of communicators has multiplied ad infinitum. Today, we want to say everything, everything can be watched, and everybody wants to communicate. Although we are a communication society, at the same time we are “anxious” about communication. The availability of technologies, communication opportunities, and people communicating has placed us in a scenario where we come together/apart in many ways. Maybe the most significant result of the so-called process of techno-cultural convergence is the sense that meanings are transmitted, technologies are becoming hybridized, and communications are intersecting. This paper explores how the processes whereby people, needs, and technologies intersect become hybridized, and coexist in the Internet, currently the most paradigmatic object in convergence. Several examples of users' “communities” content interacting in different Web spaces are analyzed to show how each of the aspects defining techno-cultural convergence relates to the expressive needs of individuals and their cultures, and to the technological possibilities of the formats they use to communicate.
Notes
3On Alexa.com (CitationAlexa, 2007, Citation2008), one of the companies that measures Web traffic, the global ranking places social networking sites among the most visited, and among these Facebook and MySpace usually rank in the top five.
5The proliferation of television channels that have begun to explore, specialize and segment publics, television formats, and content has been fundamental in this regard.
7This, of course, has provoked conflicting reactions. Recently CNN, in a commercial laden with “moral panic” (Marwick, 2008), aired a warning to young people to be careful what they published on the Internet, given that it might be seen by anyone and meet any fate.