Convergence

Convergence is an international peer-reviewed academic journal which was set up in 1995 to address the creative, social, political and pedagogical issues raised by the advent of what were then ‘emergent’ new media technologies. More than 20 years later we see the intense and ubiquitous integration and absorption of these technologies into almost every aspect of our everyday cultural, social, creative and political lives. As an international research journal, it provides a forum both for monitoring and exploring developments in the field and for encouraging, publishing and promoting vital innovative research. Adopting an inter-disciplinary approach and published six times a year, Convergence has developed this area into an entirely new research field.

The principal aim of Convergence is:

• To encourage and advance interdisciplinary modes of enquiry into the study of the histories, trajectories, impacts, practices, pleasures and creative potential of contemporary convergent media and allied innovative technologies.

We seek research that supports this aim through:

• The development and application of critical frameworks and methodologies that enable the reception, consumption and impact of convergent media and convergent technologies to be evaluated in their domestic, commercial, public and educational contexts;
• Contextualising the study of these convergent media and technologies within existing critical academic debates, and to address the specific implications of the increasing convergence of media forms;
• Monitoring, analyzing and evaluating the conditions of emergence of new media technologies, their subsequent mass production and the development of new cultural forms;
  Promoting the discussion and analysis of the creative and pedagogic potentials of those technologies, and contextualising those cultural practices within wider cultural and political debates.