Negotiating freedoms in the convergent mediascape

Abstract

The research in this issue questions whether media convergence is opening new possibilities for a greater range of voices to be heard or threatening to close down channels through which diversity and democracy is being expressed. Ross Tapsell argues that convergence is both contributing to and undermining freedom in Indonesia. He observes that scholars have viewed media freedom as threatened and explores the factors that have led technological convergence to commercial convergence. In comparison, Sarah Harris’ analyses of two cases of digital activism in Turkey evidence how censorship is a systematic process grounded in legal and media infrastructures. Her case studies show the effect of erasure on both public and individual discourse; for example, Blocked Web collects and organizes data on state-classified website bans, whilst Interactive Mass Grave Map marks the locations of hundreds of unmarked graves in which disappeared citizens are thought to be buried. Both are unpleasant reminders of the attempts of the powerful to shut down voices of dissent. Beyond state and media infrastructures media creators are exploring the textual and linguistic borderlands provided by new technologies for spaces for discourses of diversity and formation of new meaning. Megan Condis cites BioWare’s decision to include diversity in games like Star Wars: The Old Republic and Dragon Age II, by adding the option to play as a gay male character. Through her analysis she questions how titles such as ‘fan’ or ‘gamer’ are being contested along the lines of gender and sexuality. Aylish Wood on the other hand examines how virtual spaces afford new locations for meaning construction. Her examples are the three-dimensional (3D) cinematic space in Hugo and the IMAX format in The Dark Knight. Such a space offers multiple points of engagement for an audience. Both articles focus on case studies that extend the vocabulary of their media discourse. The new media aesthetics of 3D cinema previously featured in a guest-edited special section of Convergence (November 2013, Vol. 19, issue 4). Wood’s article follows on from this and extends