New Media Environment. Media Convergence in Time and Space

The aim of the project is the interdisciplinary characterisation of the media convergence process in time and space ? transforming human surrounding. This project is a sub-project in relation to the one I have been carrying out since 1.10.2007 in Poland, entitled Aspects of Convergence. New Media and their Users. The aim of the sub-project is to answer the most essential research question: How the intersection of media and public space, evolving in time, transforms the environment of the human life? The a nalysis will be supplemented by the responses to two additional questions. What form and content do hybrid media environments have? What patterns of media use, or rather patterns of life with the media and in the media are designed by the new media conste llations? Integrated research instrumentation will be used in the project: case studies on media and space convergence with the use of observation, participant observation and discursive analysis of the media content based on the collected written materia ls, photographs and films. Material for the analysis will be collected in Norway. Theoretical frameworks of the project will be designated by the works on media convergence and intermediality and interdisciplinary analyses focusing on the relationships be tween new media and public space, including the urban studies. Thanks to the project, the convergence specification occurring in the human media environment, will be approximated. The following aspects of the phenomenon will be taken into account: socio-c ultural (in terms of the new types of media presence in public space and its interference with users? daily lives), media (in terms of the new types of media forms and contents interpenetrating the human environment), technological (in terms of analysis o f equipment, networks and their linkages), economical (in terms of the relationships between convergence and commercialization) and aesthetical.