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ahorbinskiBibliographic Data: Jenkins, Henry. Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide. New York: New York University Press, 2006.
Main Argument:
Introduction: Argument, Sources, Examples "This book is about the relationship between three concepts--media convergence, participatory culture, and collective intelligence" (2). For Jenkins, convergence means "the flow of content across multiple media platforms, the cooperation between multiple media industries, and the migratory behavior of media audiences" (ibid). Jenkins characterizes the resulting paradigm as "participatory culture" because even consumers are doing some of the (intellectual, virtual, informatic) labor of the system, in their very brains, though not all participants are created equal. That said, Jenkins believes that the resulting "collective intelligence" which arises out of this collective consumption "can be seen as an alternative source of media power" and that this "collective meaning-making" will be deployed beyond the media sphere (4). Jenkins also discusses the old "digital revolution" paradigm and disagrees with it, saying that "the emerging convergence paradigm assumes that old and new media will interact in ever more complex ways" (6) rather than new displacing old. Following Ithiel de Sola Pool, Jenkins argues that we are currently in an age of media transition, "one marked by tactical decisions and unintended consequences, mixed signals and competing interests, and most of all, unclear directions and unpredictable outcomes" (11). [NB: Jenkins pinpoints convergence beginning in the 1980s (Pool was writing in 1983), with which I, following Marc Steinberg, disagree as the date for the beginning of this form of capitalism--the 1980s was when it began to go large after the 1973 crisis of capitalism.] The proliferation of black boxes (and, eight years later, of devices) is a sign of this; no one is yet sure what functions should be combined with what in the same package. Through it all, though, it is clear that convergence is both top-down and bottom-up; it is a contested realm of both corporations and participatory cultures.
Chapter 1: Argument, Sources, Examples This show looks at Survivor to anatomize a "knowledge community." For Jenkins, drawing on Pierre Lévy, "Survivor spoiling is collective intelligence in practice" (28). He argues that "what holds a collective intelligence [such as the Survivor fan community] together is not the possession of knowledge--which is relatively static, but the social process of acquiring knowledge--which is dynamic and participatory, continually testing and reaffirming the group's social ties" (54). For Jenkins, such knowledge communities are "central to the process of grassroots convergence" (57). Although producers tried to direct fan engagement, "fans also exploited convergence to create their own points of contact" (ibid). Their "the collaborative production and evaluation of knowledge" "generated greater interest in the series" even as it undermined producers' control of the discourse about the show (ibid).
Chapter 2: Argument, Sources, Examples This chapter looks at the process of how producers sell fan engagement in American Idol through the concept of "affective economics," by which Jenkins means "a new configuration of marketing theory…which seeks to understand the emotional underpinnings of consumer decision-making as a driving force behind viewing and purchasing decisions," and thus to mold those decisions (61-62). Jenkins discusses "brand communities," which are communities of brand-lovers organized around a brand who find each other through the brand, and which increasingly have been moving online [or perhaps better are socially networked]. Thus, "just as the social dynamic of these online communities reaffirm and/or redefine their individual members' brand loyalties, a similar social dynamic shapes the way people consume media and products within their families or with friends" (80). Knowledge is shared across community members of varying commitment, which creates an incentive to share knowledge and an incentive to find knowledge across media platforms. AI makes clear that "at a time when networks and sponsors are joining forces to shape the emotional context through which we watch their shows, then consumers are also scrutinizing the mechanisms of participation they are being offered" (91) and the brands that endorse them, with potentially negative consequences if certain segments of the brand community are alienated.
Chapter 3: Argument, Sources, Examples This chapter looks at The Matrix franchise as the example par excellence of transmedia storytelling. For Jenkins, "a transmedia story unfolds across multiple media platforms, with each new text making a distinctive and valuable contribution to the whole" (95-96). Ideally, each aspect of the story will be suited to its medium doing what it does best; each entry will be self-contained enough for enjoyment, but will act as a point of entry to the whole; "reading across the media sustains a depth of experience that motivates more consumption" (96). Jenkins discusses how the "gaps" in the later films that critics found unsatisfying are precisely the places through which transmedia flow, and that crucially, transmedia require a high degree of collaborative authorship, to the point where what is "original" to the Wachowski siblings, for example, is not so much the story but the world-building [Jenkins uses the term "world-making"], because storytelling has become world-building, which follows its own market logic (and allows audiences to do part of the work of consumption by learning about the world, and by constructing the meaning[s] of that world). What characterizes these stories and these audiences is the play of information, which Jenkins, looking at Japanese transmedia franchise such as Pokémon and Yu-Gi-Oh!, suggests is natural: "in a hunting culture, kids play with bows and arrows. In an information society, they play with information" (130).
Chapter 4: Argument, Sources, Examples This chapter looks at fans and fan media production and official producers and the interactions between them. Jenkins sees fan media production as "reaffirming the right of everyday people to actively contribute to their culture" (132). Furthermore, "this new vercanular culture encourages broad participation, grassroots creativity, and a bartering or gift economy" (ibid). Crucially, however, "within convergence culture, everyone's a participant--although participants may have different degrees of status and influence" (ibid). Jenkins draws a distinction between interactivity, which "refers to the way that new technologies have been designed to be more responsive to consumer feedback," and participation, which "is shaped by the cultural and social protocols" and "is more open-ended, less under the control of media producers and more under the control of media consumers" (133). Jenkins traces a route from the folk culture of the C19, which was displaced by the mass media of the C20, to the "public reemergence of grassroots creativity" in the C21. Furthermore, Jenkins points out that this is not new; rather, "the Web has made visible the hidden compromises that enabled participatory culture and commercial culture to coexist throughout much of the 20thC" (137).
Chapter 5: Argument, Sources, ExamplesThis chapter looks at the so-called "Potter wars" [NB: Henry Jenkins' Potter wars are not the Potter wars that the fandom remembers] "as a struggle over competing notions of media literacy and how it should be taught" (171). The Potter wars were also particularly naked exposures of the disjunctures between differing definitions of "participation" between producers and audiences, and people who take differing approaches within them to rights and fair use etc. Jenkins argues that these battles do not reduce themselves to simple good an evil, but rather that "in the age of media convergence, consumer participation has emerged as the central conceptual problem" and the battlefield between those who want to hang onto old certainties [Azuma Hiroki would say, bankrupt grand narratives] and those who want to encourage the creation of new ones by individuals, particularly by children.
Chapter 6: Argument, Sources, Examples This chapter looks at the transformation of political participation since 2000, which Jenkins characterizes as "citizens starting to apply what they have learned as consumers of popular culture toward more overt forms of political activism" (208). [One might add that since the basis of U.S. citizenship has been consumption since at least 1946, this is merely a long-overdue rebalancing of the scales.] Digital democracy potentially "expands the range of voices can be heard" because "the new media operate with different principles than the broadcast media that dominated American politics for so long: access, participation, reciprocity, and peer-to-peer rather than one to many communication" (ibid).
Conclusion: Argument, Sources, Examples Jenkins concludes that
Critical assessment: Damn, this book is full of dudes. Also, it's super trippy reading this book now because Jenkins was so right that everything he says in here feels so self-evident as to be axiomatic. There are critiques that could be made--see the entries by Steinberg and by myself in the "Further Reading" section--but by and large Jenkins deserves his position as the prophet of convergence culture, in my opinion. That said, a look at the problems "the Wikipedia" has developed as it has matured shows that new media are not arising in a new environment, but rather are, to some extent, shaped by preexisting structures of oppression and control even as they challenge them. Ah, the post-post-Fordist post-postmodern dilemma.
Further reading: Marc Steinberg, Anime's Media Mix; Alex Leavitt and Andrea Horbinski, "Even a Monkey Can Understand Fan Activism"; Lisa Gitelman, Always Already New; Anne Allison, Millennial Monsters; Andrea Horbinski, "After Henry Jenkins: Transmedia Fandom"
Meta notes: Convergence and divergence are two sides of the same coin.
Main Argument:
This circulation of media content--across different media systems, competing media economies, and national borders--depends heavily on consumers' active participation. I will argue here against the idea that convergence should be understood primarily as a technological process bringing together multiple media functions within the same devices. Instead, convergence represents a cultural shift as consumers are encouraged to seek out new information and make connections among dispersed media content. This book is about the work--and play--spectators perform in the new media system. (3)
Introduction: Argument, Sources, Examples "This book is about the relationship between three concepts--media convergence, participatory culture, and collective intelligence" (2). For Jenkins, convergence means "the flow of content across multiple media platforms, the cooperation between multiple media industries, and the migratory behavior of media audiences" (ibid). Jenkins characterizes the resulting paradigm as "participatory culture" because even consumers are doing some of the (intellectual, virtual, informatic) labor of the system, in their very brains, though not all participants are created equal. That said, Jenkins believes that the resulting "collective intelligence" which arises out of this collective consumption "can be seen as an alternative source of media power" and that this "collective meaning-making" will be deployed beyond the media sphere (4). Jenkins also discusses the old "digital revolution" paradigm and disagrees with it, saying that "the emerging convergence paradigm assumes that old and new media will interact in ever more complex ways" (6) rather than new displacing old. Following Ithiel de Sola Pool, Jenkins argues that we are currently in an age of media transition, "one marked by tactical decisions and unintended consequences, mixed signals and competing interests, and most of all, unclear directions and unpredictable outcomes" (11). [NB: Jenkins pinpoints convergence beginning in the 1980s (Pool was writing in 1983), with which I, following Marc Steinberg, disagree as the date for the beginning of this form of capitalism--the 1980s was when it began to go large after the 1973 crisis of capitalism.] The proliferation of black boxes (and, eight years later, of devices) is a sign of this; no one is yet sure what functions should be combined with what in the same package. Through it all, though, it is clear that convergence is both top-down and bottom-up; it is a contested realm of both corporations and participatory cultures.
Chapter 1: Argument, Sources, Examples This show looks at Survivor to anatomize a "knowledge community." For Jenkins, drawing on Pierre Lévy, "Survivor spoiling is collective intelligence in practice" (28). He argues that "what holds a collective intelligence [such as the Survivor fan community] together is not the possession of knowledge--which is relatively static, but the social process of acquiring knowledge--which is dynamic and participatory, continually testing and reaffirming the group's social ties" (54). For Jenkins, such knowledge communities are "central to the process of grassroots convergence" (57). Although producers tried to direct fan engagement, "fans also exploited convergence to create their own points of contact" (ibid). Their "the collaborative production and evaluation of knowledge" "generated greater interest in the series" even as it undermined producers' control of the discourse about the show (ibid).
Chapter 2: Argument, Sources, Examples This chapter looks at the process of how producers sell fan engagement in American Idol through the concept of "affective economics," by which Jenkins means "a new configuration of marketing theory…which seeks to understand the emotional underpinnings of consumer decision-making as a driving force behind viewing and purchasing decisions," and thus to mold those decisions (61-62). Jenkins discusses "brand communities," which are communities of brand-lovers organized around a brand who find each other through the brand, and which increasingly have been moving online [or perhaps better are socially networked]. Thus, "just as the social dynamic of these online communities reaffirm and/or redefine their individual members' brand loyalties, a similar social dynamic shapes the way people consume media and products within their families or with friends" (80). Knowledge is shared across community members of varying commitment, which creates an incentive to share knowledge and an incentive to find knowledge across media platforms. AI makes clear that "at a time when networks and sponsors are joining forces to shape the emotional context through which we watch their shows, then consumers are also scrutinizing the mechanisms of participation they are being offered" (91) and the brands that endorse them, with potentially negative consequences if certain segments of the brand community are alienated.
Chapter 3: Argument, Sources, Examples This chapter looks at The Matrix franchise as the example par excellence of transmedia storytelling. For Jenkins, "a transmedia story unfolds across multiple media platforms, with each new text making a distinctive and valuable contribution to the whole" (95-96). Ideally, each aspect of the story will be suited to its medium doing what it does best; each entry will be self-contained enough for enjoyment, but will act as a point of entry to the whole; "reading across the media sustains a depth of experience that motivates more consumption" (96). Jenkins discusses how the "gaps" in the later films that critics found unsatisfying are precisely the places through which transmedia flow, and that crucially, transmedia require a high degree of collaborative authorship, to the point where what is "original" to the Wachowski siblings, for example, is not so much the story but the world-building [Jenkins uses the term "world-making"], because storytelling has become world-building, which follows its own market logic (and allows audiences to do part of the work of consumption by learning about the world, and by constructing the meaning[s] of that world). What characterizes these stories and these audiences is the play of information, which Jenkins, looking at Japanese transmedia franchise such as Pokémon and Yu-Gi-Oh!, suggests is natural: "in a hunting culture, kids play with bows and arrows. In an information society, they play with information" (130).
Chapter 4: Argument, Sources, Examples This chapter looks at fans and fan media production and official producers and the interactions between them. Jenkins sees fan media production as "reaffirming the right of everyday people to actively contribute to their culture" (132). Furthermore, "this new vercanular culture encourages broad participation, grassroots creativity, and a bartering or gift economy" (ibid). Crucially, however, "within convergence culture, everyone's a participant--although participants may have different degrees of status and influence" (ibid). Jenkins draws a distinction between interactivity, which "refers to the way that new technologies have been designed to be more responsive to consumer feedback," and participation, which "is shaped by the cultural and social protocols" and "is more open-ended, less under the control of media producers and more under the control of media consumers" (133). Jenkins traces a route from the folk culture of the C19, which was displaced by the mass media of the C20, to the "public reemergence of grassroots creativity" in the C21. Furthermore, Jenkins points out that this is not new; rather, "the Web has made visible the hidden compromises that enabled participatory culture and commercial culture to coexist throughout much of the 20thC" (137).
Chapter 5: Argument, Sources, ExamplesThis chapter looks at the so-called "Potter wars" [NB: Henry Jenkins' Potter wars are not the Potter wars that the fandom remembers] "as a struggle over competing notions of media literacy and how it should be taught" (171). The Potter wars were also particularly naked exposures of the disjunctures between differing definitions of "participation" between producers and audiences, and people who take differing approaches within them to rights and fair use etc. Jenkins argues that these battles do not reduce themselves to simple good an evil, but rather that "in the age of media convergence, consumer participation has emerged as the central conceptual problem" and the battlefield between those who want to hang onto old certainties [Azuma Hiroki would say, bankrupt grand narratives] and those who want to encourage the creation of new ones by individuals, particularly by children.
Chapter 6: Argument, Sources, Examples This chapter looks at the transformation of political participation since 2000, which Jenkins characterizes as "citizens starting to apply what they have learned as consumers of popular culture toward more overt forms of political activism" (208). [One might add that since the basis of U.S. citizenship has been consumption since at least 1946, this is merely a long-overdue rebalancing of the scales.] Digital democracy potentially "expands the range of voices can be heard" because "the new media operate with different principles than the broadcast media that dominated American politics for so long: access, participation, reciprocity, and peer-to-peer rather than one to many communication" (ibid).
Conclusion: Argument, Sources, Examples Jenkins concludes that
Convergence does not depend on any specific delivery mechanism. Rather, convergence represents a paradigm shift--a move from medium-specific content toward content that flows across multiple media channels, toward the increased interdependence of communications systems, toward multiple ways of accessing media content, and toward ever more complex relations between top-down corporate media and bottom-up participatory culture. Depsite the rhetoric about "democratizing television," this shift is being driven by economic calculations and not by some broad mission to empower the public. … Yet, whatever its motivations, convergence is changing the ways in which media industries operate and the ways average people think about their relation to media. (243)He also (rightly) criticizes those whom he calls the "critical pessimists" for being too locked into the old paradigm of resistance, which as any good Marxist should realize is simply not possible in this postmodern post-post-Fordist moment. Jenkins also discusses "the Wikipedia" as an equivalent of fan fiction communities in that both enable a range of interpretations (i.e. knowledges) to be accessed and heard.
Critical assessment: Damn, this book is full of dudes. Also, it's super trippy reading this book now because Jenkins was so right that everything he says in here feels so self-evident as to be axiomatic. There are critiques that could be made--see the entries by Steinberg and by myself in the "Further Reading" section--but by and large Jenkins deserves his position as the prophet of convergence culture, in my opinion. That said, a look at the problems "the Wikipedia" has developed as it has matured shows that new media are not arising in a new environment, but rather are, to some extent, shaped by preexisting structures of oppression and control even as they challenge them. Ah, the post-post-Fordist post-postmodern dilemma.
Further reading: Marc Steinberg, Anime's Media Mix; Alex Leavitt and Andrea Horbinski, "Even a Monkey Can Understand Fan Activism"; Lisa Gitelman, Always Already New; Anne Allison, Millennial Monsters; Andrea Horbinski, "After Henry Jenkins: Transmedia Fandom"
Meta notes: Convergence and divergence are two sides of the same coin.