The innovation of digital communication—central to the development of the first computers in the 1940s—enables all media content to be created in the same basic way, which makes media convergence, the technological merging of content in different mass media, possible.

In recent years, the Internet has really become the hub for convergence, a place where music, television shows, radio stations, newspapers, magazines, books, games, and movies are created, distributed, and presented. Although convergence initially happened on desktop computers, it was the popularity of notebook computers, and then the introduction of smartphones and tablets, that have hastened the pace of media convergence and have made the idea of accessing any media content, anywhere, a reality.