The development of digital media presents a unique opportunity to reconsider what communication is, and what individuals, groups, and societies might hope to accomplish through new as well as old media. At a time when digital media still provoke both utopian and dystopian views of their likely consequences, Klaus Bruhn Jensen places these 'new' media in a comparative perspective together with 'old' mass media and face-to-face communication, restating the two classic questions of media studies: what do media do to people, and what do people do with media?ããMedia Convergence makes a distinction between three general types of media: the human body enabling communication in the flesh; the technically reproduced means of mass communication; and the digital technologies facilitating interaction one-to-one, one-to-many, as well as many-to-many.Features include:case studies, including mobile phones in everyday life, the Muhammad cartoons controversy and climate change as a global challenge for human communication and political actiondiagrams, figures, and tables summarizing key concepts beyond standard 'models of communication'systematic cross-referencing. Major terms are highlighted and cross-referenced throughout, with key concepts defined in margin notes.

Klaus Bruhn Jensen is Professor at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark. Recent publications include A Handbook of Media and Communication Research (2002) and International Encyclopedia of Communication (12 vols, 2008), for which he served as Area Editor of Communication Theory and Philosophy. Current research interests include internet studies, mobile media, and communication theory.