WK Zero - Understanding key terms

 

Convergence is the tendency of media to share a common, intergated platform. This occurence has accelerated in recent times due to digitization, which helped overcome many of the technical issues that hindered convergence in the past.

Globalization is a set of processes in which the autonomy of nation states is being sacrifices in exchange for flexible worldwide social relations. Through economic globalization, mass media, which are almost exclusively owned by multinational corporations, have opportunities to bring their products to disatant local markets.

Postmodernity is a term used to refer to the contemporary time. It began to emerge in the 1960s with the shift from commodity-based manufacturing to information-based services. Some of its defining traits are global capitalism, informationalism, computerization, customization and global corporations, among other things.

According to Jean Baudrillard, "Simulation is the generation by models of a real without origin or reality: a hyperreal." It is the implosion of the image and reality, as in this day and age it is harder and harder to differentiate between the two due to the influence of mass media. The media constantly produce images of love, violence, family and other things without any connections to an external reality.