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Marshal McLuhan is adjudged as the one who first gave a hint on the digital revolution. In the same vein, assertions on media convergence is credited to the late Massachusetts Institute of Technology political scientist, de Sola Pool (1983) through his text titled Technologies of Freedom, where he coined the term “convergence of modes” and offered the conceptualization of media as a process “blurring the lines between media” (Bansal, 2009, p. 3). Pool, in his conceptualization, observed that the traditional divisions between media industries, such as the press, broadcasting and telephone networks, were blurring due to the growing use and influence of digital electronics. Pool is one of the early prophets to point out that convergence can break the walls among each media platform and enable the same content to flow through different media platforms.

In spite of Pool’s early conceptualisation, some scholars still don’t think the idea of converging operations is new (Colon, 2000). Gordon (2003) cited in Quinn and Filak (2005, p. 5) traces the term convergence to its use in economics where it is used to discuss the process of “convergence of national economics into a global economy.” It would be computers and earlier forms of the Internet that gave rise to new meanings in the different contexts of communication technology research. Based on Lawson-Borders’s (2006) research, Tribune Company had started its early model of convergence in 1920s with a merger of the Chicago tribune and the company’s radio station. According to Colon (2000), some newspapers in the U.S had owned television stations and shared news functions with other media outlets as far back as 1950s. By the first half of the 2000s, “newsroom convergence” had become the next buzzword to spread around media industry. The most widely publicise case was in Tampa, United States, where Media General built a $40 million “temple of convergence” (Colon, 2000, p. 26) for its Tampa Tribune newspaper, NBC television affiliate, and TBO.com website. The Tampa’s model underline what is generally associated with media convergence from the perspective of new digital technologies.

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There are different attempts at defining convergence in a number of new media technologies researches which identify the significance of the concept in journalism. Doyle (2002) talks about media convergence from the perspectives of technology by referring convergence to the coming together of the technology of telecommunication, computing, and media. The term convergence has become associated with “electronic content delivery” (Gordon, 2003 cited in Quinn & Filak, 2005). Within the media landscape, convergence has also come to mean “a whole array of convenient work-saving devices that allowed reporters to use computers for research, analysis and writing” (Pavlik & Dennis, 1993, p. 3). Bansal (2009), claims there is no single definition for convergence, adding that it is multidimensional with varying conceptions and contexts. Latzer (2013) opines that convergence is an ambiguous multidisciplinary term being used to describe and analyse processes of change toward uniformity or union. For this study, I reckon with a definition that describes convergence as the “blurring of boundaries” between previously distinct media and communication technologies (Wahl-Jorgensen & Hanitzsch, 2009, p. 130). In communication research, the concept of media convergence is used to describe different sorts of blurring boundaries. More common is the blurriness in the programming of public and private broadcasters in dual-order models (Kleinsteuber, 2008) and demarcation between telecommunications and the mass media as investigated in the current research.

Jenkins (2006) offers popular insights into convergence through its oft-quoted book Convergence: where old and new media collide. In this book, the author describes the new migratory behaviour of content across multiple media platform and media audience, including the cooperation between multiple media industries. By stating that “Media convergence is an ongoing process, occurring at various intersections of media technologies, industries, content and audiences beliefs” (Kolodzy, 2006, p. 4). Jenkins (2001) provides a simple framework for defining convergence. Kolodzy also figures out a framework that clearly indicates that media industries are participating in convergence in order to produce and distribute different media content to different media audiences by using different equipment and tools. The crux of convergence, in Jenkin’s view, rests not only on technology but the participatory affordance brought by technology. He reckons with the cultural shift in attitude of once passive audience who are now active seekers of media content and social connections.

Jenkins (2001) elaborates five processes which describe media convergence, these are: technological convergence, economic convergence, social or organic convergence, cultural convergence, and global convergence. Technological convergence refers to digitisation of all media content. The transformation of words, images, and sounds into digital information which

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makes the digitised formats to flow seamlessly across different media platforms. This is the process of media convergence that drives technology adoption in most African broadcast journalism. It describes the adoption and appropriation of operation system such as computer technology and software, telecommunications and the Internet in broadcast production including programming. Economic convergence refers to industry or “corporate merger” (Baldwin et al. 1996; Fidler, 1997, p. 27). Social or organic convergence refers to technology users’ multitasking abilities for navigating the new information environment. It exemplifies the ability of a consumer to use technology to combine two or more tasks at the same time. Cultural convergence, describes new forms of creativity which is at the intersection of various media technologies and which generate new forms of multimedia content that can promoted across different platforms. Global convergence refers to the cultural hybridity that results from international circulation of media content. This also exemplifies the use of the Internet’s social media, for instance, by Nigerian radio station to stream their flagship programmes on social network sites like Facebook. The approach helps international audiences to link up with a local station in real-time. Using technology to achieve global connectedness is in itself a form of hybridised convergence. The effect of convergence hybridity of this nature comes with implications which require scholarly attention. It remains an interesting perspective worth exploring in technology adoption research of this nature.

In its multi-perspective and eclectism, convergence has provided the analytical framework for various industries to discuss various aspects of change, to observe conflicting processes of convergence and divergence as two faces of the same phenomenon (Jenkins, 2006) and to provoke industry reform (Fagerjord & Storsul, 2007). Latzer (2013) points to the inevitability and desirability of convergence of telecommunications and broadcasting since the 1980s, even though the strategic objectives seem to have “taken place more intensely than in media circles” (p. 3).

In summary, convergence has to do with the blurring of the limits between different media in terms of professional skills, formats, production strategies and journalistic roles (Deuze, 2004; Domingo, et al., 2011). As inseparable “recombinants” concepts of media convergence (Deuze, 2004), multimedia and interactivity relate directly to the affordance of new technologies, that is their capacity to deliver information in multiple formats such as text, audio, video and graphics (otherwise multimodality), and to effect a two-way synchronous or quasi-synchronous communication system via the internet and mobile phone technologies (Oni, 2013; Steensen, 2011). Bardoel and Deuze (2001), opine that convergence represents one of the key characteristics of journalism and the Internet. Convergence, interactivity,

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customisation of content and hypertextuality - put together with the widespread use and availability of new technological “tools of the trade” are putting all genres and types of journalism to the test. It underscores the concepts of “networked journalism” and participatory journalism. Networked journalism has to do with the convergence between the core competences and functions of journalists and the civic potential of online journalism. Participatory journalism, on the other hand, has to do with the act of a citizen or a group of citizens playing an active role in the process of collecting, reporting, analysing and disseminating news and information (Bowman & Willis, 2003). This latter concept falls within the ambit of this study in its focus on how new digital technologies are used within the context of interactivity in the Nigerian radio newsrooms for participatory programming or journalists- audience interactivity on-air and online.