Core Response #4 by Yiyan Pan

One intriguing aspect of media convergence is how non-traditional television forms are integrated into the system, altering the audience's relationship with the content. This provides viewers with more opportunities to engage more deeply with television content. As highlighted by Caldwell in the case of Dawsonscreek.com, characterized proliferations enable users to access the "personal lives" of the show's characters and actors through the website (51). Users can "click here" to explore further into their personal lives, providing an enhanced and interactive viewing experience (51). Additionally, there is a newfound sense of intimacy that reshapes the connection between the viewer and the content: the viewer can have be more active and have more agency (52). Notably, the viewer's interaction with television content is transformed, granting them more agency to delve deeper into the show, particularly the private lives of the characters, through active and individualized "clicking" on various choices.

I have been fascinated for some time by the differences in digital platforms between the United States and China. In the United States, we have platforms like or Paypal for payment, WhatsApp for messaging, and YouTube for video viewing, each platform famous in its own right. However, in China, I have noticed the emergence of super technology companies like Tencent that have seamlessly integrated payment, chatting, and television viewing, and leaves almost no space for company specialized in payment or chatting. There’s no such payment company like Paypal that can dominant part of the market. Tencent, a famous technology company in China, has a clear objective of creating a media ecosystem that facilitates connectivity across various industries. As Jenkins suggests, "Convergence is both a top-down corporate-driven process and a bottom-up consumer-driven process," and Tencent seems to embody this approach (37). The company is expanding revenue opportunities, broadening markets, and reinforcing consumers’ commitments by opening more functions based on friends connections. The company is capitalizing on the expanding opportunity. What initially began as a mere communication tool has now evolved to encompass a wide range of activities among friends, resulting in the creation of additional revenue opportunities.