Francoise PAPA

　　Francoise PAPA

　　Stendhal University Germany, lecturers

　　Education Background：Institute of Political Studies of Grenoble, Doctor

　　Research Interests：Media convergence, new media, informational communication technique

　　Main Publications：Global communicatio : The Olympic games as a key moment to develop an ethical future ? Does the Internet meet the requirement of sport information as a related media?

　　Is there Still a Place for a Universal Vision of the Games

　　in the Era of Media Convergence?

　　Francoise PAPA

　　The increasing importance of on-line information devices pushes aside the historic models of production, broadcasting and consumption of informative contents: multiple information from different sources, are henceforth available and easily reached for a large number of people. These evolutions lead us, in a general way, to examine the logics and the strategies of the agents operating in the field of media and content production. In a more specific way, we have to analyse their concrete forms within the framework of the media sport events. The media coverage of the major sport events prefigures, from the end of the 90s, a global evolution characterized by diversification of formats and hybridization of the informative devices, mixing the traditional media formats.

　　Beside traditional producers of information already on the net, appeared new agents, that we could call “designers” of information and of individual experiences. Furthermore, they create new modes of relationships between the users and the producers of on-line contents: they consider the internet users as individuals who are both consuming and producing information, and they put them at the focal point of their devices and interconnect them.

　　These evolutions seem to indicate a movement setting Internet as the future centre point of the informative field.

　　As regards the Olympic Games, we know that Internet is not in position to displace the television in the mediatization of the games as a sport show but we can examine the following hypothesis: would not internet constitute the privileged device for broadcasting the Games as an information event?

　　Several studies concerning the television broadcasting of the Olympic Games questioned the existence of an homogeneous and unified vision of the Games. Some others expect the end of the era of the ceremonial television. So, how do we have to consider media coverage and broadcast of big media events?

　　Do we have to consider that Internet will deepen national, cultural, individualized logics operating in the broadcast of the games?

　　Moreover, reactivity and interactivity on internet are in line with the expectations of the public of the Olympics. Don’t we attend the beginning of a reversal of paradigm? Aren’t we moving from a communication strictly defined and controlled by the organizers to a communication shaped in accordance with the requests of consumers, playing a larger part in the communication process? Is there still a place for a universal vision of the Games in the era of media convergence?

　　Key words: internet media events Olympic Games relations frames