Anja Bechmann Petersen. “Internet and Cross Media Production: Case Studies in Two Major Danish Media Organizations” Australian Journal of Emerging Technology and Society

4.2 (2006): 94-107

Abstract of an Article.

One of the main issues in Internet studies nowadays is convergence – the flow of content across multiple media platforms. However, recently media organizations became more interested in cross media communication – the communication through coordinated combination of platforms. This can be explained by the fact that media organizations try to optimize communication across different platforms (newspapers, radio, TV, websites, cell phones etc.) The author examines the role of the Internet with emphasis on cross media rather than convergence (Petersen 94).

The main thesis of the article is that the Internet plays manifold roles in cross media communication. The roles of the Internet in outward perspective (towards the users) are: serving as a version of other media product and serving as participatory platform in the cross-media platform-palette (Petersen 105). At the same time the article proves that the Internet plays a minor role inside media organizations if compared to older media (Petersen 94).

The crucial elements in deciding the priority and use of platforms are organizations’ history and the content of the cross media concepts (Petersen 94). The article studies case examples in a two very different news organizations – a regional corporation and a national broadcasting company in Denmark. Thus, methodologically, cross media and the roles of the Internet are studied on a micro-level.

Anja Bechmann Petersen bases her work on two assumptions: the first is that all modes of communications are brought into one grand system; the second is that in the contemporary media scene the starting point is not digital media or the Internet, but, mainly, traditional media. These assumptions moved her towards taking as examples traditional media organizations (newspaper and broadcast company), which expanded or merged with other media platforms.

Besides cross media and convergence the author uses the concept of divergence of media in the article. Divergence, as the opposite of convergence, is a state where the content flows from several platforms into single one.

The major shortcoming of the article, to my mind, is that it does not represent the whole picture of the issue. The author deliberately takes only two different media corporations with two very different productions and makes conclusions within the units studied. However it is impossible to see whether conclusions made are relevant towards media organizations in Denmark as a whole and if not, then the importance of the article is very low.

Nevertheless, I see the major contributions of this work to the field in showing and explaining how the Internet platform is used by media producers and consumers and what this usage gives to both of them. The article can be helpful for those who generate content to the Internet version of the media. For me personally it was interesting and useful to see the work of two media organizations which work with several media platforms.