Enrique Uribe-Jongbloed

Rethinking Convergence: A New Word to Describe an Old Idea

Convergence seems to be a new concept related to the field of communication. Nevertheless it is important to remark that the idea of convergence is a classic one in order to understand the relationship between humans and communication processes. The present chapter depicts the evolution of convergence as a theoretical framework, from philosophical perspectives such as Simondon’s idea of genesis and McLuhan’s laws of media to the contemporary approaches such as Jenkin’s convergence culture. Instead of thinking of convergence as a contemporary characteristic of communication environment, or merely a technological objectuality, we propose to rethink it as a reloaded term used as a word rather than as an abstract concept in current literature. Since words can develop many meanings, convergence has been used to a variety of aspects in recent years.

Latin American contraflow in global entertainment media: Kingdom Rush series and Zambo Dende as de-localised media products:

In order to shed some light on how Latin American entrepreneurs are developing products for a globalised market and attempting to overcome cultural discount by making their products more universal in their appeal, we analyse the cases of the video game Kingdom Rush from Uruguay and the Zambo Dende audio-visual project from Colombia. To provide context, the flow of entertainment media products from Latin America is first considered, with two cases then presented in order to provide insight into the processes of economic contra-flow and cultural transduction. Based on an examination of the products and in-depth interviews with the creators (and also survey responses in the case of Kingdom Rush), the findings reveal the various challenges faced by and the achievements of these small-scale entrepreneurs to reach a global market. We pay particular attention to the way in which the products achieve global appeal to mitigate negative effects associated with the geographical and cultural origin of a product.

Making Comics as Artisans: Comic Book Production in Colombia

There is a common saying that goes, “Colombia is well known for all products that start with the letter C.” Sadly, comics are not among the products that come to mind directly after that statement. This chapter presents Colombia’s (non-existent) comics industry, and the works of those who, on the fringes of the economy, have strived to continue with their trade. We want to start by stressing the perspective from which we draw this incomplete picture of the Colombian comic world: we have been at both the academic and creative ends of comics. We grew up in a country filled with comics in the shape of small magazines, mainly American in origin and mostly translated into Spanish. We grew up reading Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse, some Marvel and DC Superhero comics, the occasional Tintin and Asterix, but very few Latin American comics, with Condorito and Kaliman taking the lead.