What is the importance of technological convergence for audiences and institutions?

Technological convergence is the merging of technologies. Examples of this technology include smart phones, smart TV and games consoles. These have a dramatic impact on both audience and institutions and can dictate the ways in which media is distributed.

Technological convergence has had a mixed effect on industries. The technology available to consumers mean that they have the ability to view content from the comfort of their home. The problem with this is that the use of smart phones as an alternative of viewing content could replace the amount of audiences who go to the cinema to watch films. The use of streaming could also mean that more people are pirating content from websites instead of paying for the film. This can result in an extreme damage to the films overall earnings, an example of a film that has been affected by this was 2013's Kick Ass 2. The film was one of the most pirated of that year and as a result was not able to gain the profit that the first film had achieved.

 The integrating of different technologies allow for new ways in which the film can be marketed. Websites such as YouTube and Twitter are common on multiple platforms and are used in order to cheaply advertise and promote their films and gain attention and a larger audience in the process. An example of a film that has successfully used technological convergence to promote their film is

Audiences are given the ability to view more content than ever before through the use of technological convergence. This is a positive for the audience as the yard able to stream hours of free content through websites such as YouTube. The merging of multiple technologies onto small devices such as smart phones allow for content to be streamed on the go. The disadvantage for this is that you have to view the content on a smaller screen with worse sound quality than you would be able to get in a cinema. Another downside to this alternative is that there is often a large waiting period between the time that a film is released from cinema. To get around this some might choose to illegally download a film but would often have to sacrifice low image quality and bad sound where the film has been illegally filmed.