Ok, seems like I am the first to have read the book. I actually started reading Convergence Culture before we started with the course because Jenkins book contains this whole new field of studies that I am interested in but knew only little about. I can say that at least for me the book presented a very good introduction to the topic of not only transmedia but also digital culture. The topics described in Jenkins book are not unfamiliar after all because many are participating already in this transmedia space almost on a daily basis. I think he provides a very good outline about the convergence of new media and culture and the modern subjects represented as a participatory culture. His fluent and comprehensive style of writing make the book digestible for laypersons and experts but also for the same reason it seems that he is merely touching the tip of the iceberg in his argumentation. Thus in my opinion it presents the perfect introduction to the topic examining how boundaries between production and consumption are breaking down. He starts his argumentation from the point of view of the audience giving examples from reality TV, literature and political campaigns and their representation on the internet, analyzing how the audience participates while simultaneously recreates the given structures.
The increase of mass media and both, mass and popular culture changed daily interaction as well as people’s life. “Once upon a time” audiences have been claimed to be passive receivers of media with little power. But, as mentioned by Thompson in Ideology and Modern Culture, mass communication which generally involved a “one-way flow of messages from the producer to the receiver” nonetheless instituted “a fundamental break between the producer and the receiver”. However, back in the early 1990s recipients had rather little capacity to intervene in this communicative (dis)course. Only little recipient response could be found hence presenting an obviously existing “fundamental asymmetry” regarding the communication between producer and consumer.
Nowadays this perception has changed 360 degrees and as Jenkins shows, the audience presents an active participant in the current media discourses developing its own opinions of what the companies/media/producers should or might do. By choosing this point of view Jenkins exemplifies how the perception of a once seemingly “subordinate” audience has changed and which, if taken from his point of view, can be ascribed with a rather equal or perhaps even superior role.
In the last three chapters, which I think are the most interesting ones, Jenkins talks about the building of new communities, their participation, the remixing and appropriation of former groups and how we/they deal with moral and cultural questions applying them to literature, media and politics and how they can be applied in the increasing sphere of a transmedia world.
Jenkins also challenges the question of control. Those who had it once have to adjust and even give some of it up. At first powerless, the audience, gains more possibilities to participate and “how-to-interfere” while constantly learning about its increasing opportunities. While challenging power structures are the norm on the internet (eg political parodies, media criticism, etc) Jenkins also emphasizes the spread and growing practice of adhocracy (a principle well adapted by Wikipedia) while opposing it to the “old” patterns of bureaucracy. On the one hand Jenkins ascribes greater power to participatory culture but on the other he also admits that “concentrated power is apt to remain concentrated” (267). I think I can agree with Jenkins in the point that within this fast changing environment of online cultures and the collaboration and collision between old and new media it is difficult to say what kind of effects it will have on producers/contributors and receivers/consumers. I think this fast changing technical environment presents one of the main problems because the possibilities of participation are endless, difficult and can also contain dangers that no one is aware of yet. It is hard to keep track with all the new developments in this technical environment and many participants (and also media producers) are learning by doing hence the outcome is rather unpredictable.
I totally agree with you about Jenkins’s writing style as you described that it makes “the book digestible...but...he is merely touching the tip of the iceberg in his argumentation”. I haven’t finished reading the book yet but feeling already full with examples before getting to a core argument, the main dish.
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