Post-Convergent Mediatization: Toward a Media Typology Beyond Web 2.0

Abstract

In this article, I argue that the concept of convergence, as is still applied to media theory, has become an insufficient way for examining the current state and future of media phenomena. This is substantiated by the fact that digital media continue to exponentially percolate into human experience in ways that transcend mere integration.  I contend that a recognition of post-convergence as a theoretical realization is crucial to future developments in media theory because it presumes that digital media are progressing toward a “digitization of life” in ways that are envisioned within the very logic of digitality. As post-convergence continues its way to become a theoretical realization, media theory should begin posing its questions about the digital not in terms of how traditional media and its attributes prevail in the digital, but of how digitality as an objective reality engenders experiences of the real requiring approaches that can only be formulated from the logic of post-convergence.  From such theorization, I propose a working typology for conceptualizing the possible nature and direction of post-convergent media: hyper-mediation, bio-digitality, hyper-connection, and hyper-simulation.