Convergence Culture

1.

Convergence
Culture
THDN 252/Film 252:
Comparative Media Studies
April 10, 2024

2.

Homework for Monday – Let's mix things up a bit!
Counting off : 1, 2, 1, 2...

3.

Monday
Materials
#1s - Read Henry Jenkins' chapter:
“Searching for the Origami Unicorn:
The Matrix & Transmedia Storytelling”
#2s - Read Eileen Meehan:
“‘Holy Commodity Fetish, Batman!’:
The Political Economy of a Commercial Intertext”
All – Prepare 1 question or comment you have about
your assigned text; be ready!

4.

Final Project & Summary
Handout & assessment criteria – To be discussed Monday

5.

Unit 3 Wrap-Up
Topic: Still & Moving Imagery

6.

Lingering Questions
We spent the last three weeks talking about the ways in which still and moving imagery document or
depict "real life" - our cultural ideas and uses of media to project messages about reality have
shifted a lot since much of the assigned materials were published...
• What are the possible futures of photography, memes, livestreaming, and television?
Is TV "dying"?
• How did or does Amazon's acquisition of Twitch change how we engage with these sites?
To what effect?

7.

Convergence Culture
No, Henry Jenkins, you can't buy
"just a phone" anymore...

8.

Who the &%&# is
Henry Jenkins?
• Provost Professor of Communication, Journalism,
Cinematic Arts and Education at the University of Southern
California
• Former Director of the MIT Comparative Media
Studies Program
• Research interests include new media, fan culture,
& the politics of pop culture
• Published Convergence Culture: Where Old and New
Media Collide in 2006
• Unabashed fan boy (aka an "Acafan")
– he doesn't pretend to be objective (12)

9.

As we run head-long into Unit 4:
I encourage you to embrace the
unabashed fanboy/girl/person
in you!

10.

The 1990s:
New Media's Emergence
• On Monday we discussed why video games were such
a potent medium in the 21st Century
• Video games are new media!
• New media = media that is accessible in digital form
• Mixture of anxiety & excitement for new media and the
internet during the '90s

11.

Some Context –
the dot-com boom
& bust
• Late '90s – growing adoption of the internet by the public
• Investors were eager to invest in online shopping companies, causing a massive over-valuation
("bubble") in the stock market
• New dot-coms and telecommunications companies quickly popped up in the Bay Area
– spent lots of $$$ on advertising
• A recession in 2000 resulted in market volatility and dot-com stocks fell dramatically
• Major companies failed when their stocks plummeted, and consumer activity could not sustain
business

12.

More Context –
Digital music & file sharing
• Record industry was slow to respond to rise of internet file
sharing capacity - held tightly to producing music in CD,
cassette, & vinyl formats
• Savy entrepreneurs took advantage and created net
services in which MP3 files could be shared peer-to-peer
(P-2-P) on a web platform
• Emergence of LimeWire & Napster
• Record industry's response? Sue consumers...

13.

Unit Kick-off Exercise
Take out a pen/pencil & grab a piece of paper

14.

Unit Kick-off Exercise - Directions
Time: 5 minutes
Task:
o Create a definition for the term assigned to your section; quotes are good!
o These definitions will be shared throughout class today
Terms:
o Door side = Participatory Culture
o Chalk board side = The Black Box Fallacy
o Window side = Convergence
o Screen side = Collective Intelligence

15.

What does Jenkins mean
by "convergence"?

16.

"Welcome to convergence culture, where old and new media
collide, where grassroots and corporate media intersect, where
the power of the media producer and the power of
the media consumer interact in unpredictable ways."
Page 2

17.

Media
Convergence
"… the flow of content across multiple media platforms, the cooperation of multiple
media industries, and the migratory behavior of media audiences who will go almost
anywhere in search of the kinds of entertainment experiences they want." (2)
Convergence is an external & internal process – consumers interact with the media
works & one another (external) to engage content & then process the content to form
their personal relationship w/that property (internal)
The public/consumers are driving convergence – pushing "the suits" and
creators (in the early 2000s) to think more broadly about their properties (8)
The complex process in which new and old media coexist
– not as simple as old media being dominated by the new (14)

18.

"Old Media"
• Pre-digital media; existing before the invention
and public accessibility of the internet
• Medium: Recorded sound
• Delivery technologies:
• 1860: Phonautograph
• 1877.: Edison wax cylinders
• 1887: Emile Berliner's flat disc records
• 1963: Compact cassettes
• 1982: Compact discs

19.

20.

New Media
• Medium: Recorded sound
• Delivery technologies:
• MP3 files
• Podcast apps/links
• Streaming music/audio apps
• iPods/iPhones

21.

Media Never Dies!
• New media will not "kill" old media
"Old media are not being displaced. Rather, their functions and status are shifted by the introduction of
new technologies" (14)
• The delivery technologies may become obsolete, but the medium remains and evolves
"A medium's content may shift... its audience may change... and its social status may rise or fall... but
once a medium establishes itself as satisfying some core human demand, it continue to function within
the larger system of communication options. Once recorded sound becomes a possibility, we have
continued to develop new and improved means of recording and playing back sound."

22.

Political scientist,
Ithiel de Sola Pool
predicts convergence
in 1983!
"Digitization set the
conditions for convergence;
corporate conglomerates
created its imperative" (11).

23.

The "Black Box"
Pages 13-16
What is the Black Box Fallacy detailed by
Jenkins in 2006?
If media is part social and part technological,
what does the fallacy neglect to address?
On any given day, how many devices do you
use to consume media? Have we moved
closer to the Black Box since this was written?

24.

Convergence is an evolving process of
production, consumption, & engagement
Convergence is not a product; it does not have an endpoint.
"We are entering an era [in 2006] where media will be everywhere." (16)

25.

A pause for
questions
Reactions to these concepts?
Need for clarification?

26.

Participatory Culture
• Consumers are growing more familiar with how to seek out and
engage media, connect with one another, and respond to
corporate participants/producers in an active way
= participatory culture (3)
• Requires both effort & pleasure - "serious leisure" (T.L. Taylor)
"When people take media into their own hands, the results can
be wonderfully creative; they can also be bad news for all
involved." (17)
• Shifts in media technology and practices based on actions taken
by corporate media powers, policymakers, and consumers (topdown & bottom-up)
• This is a deeply social - Producers and consumers are not
isolated communities & need to communicate and build off one
another; sometimes this goes well, sometimes not

27.

Where does participation take place?
What does this "active consumption" of
media look like?

28.

Conglomerates
and Franchises
Media companies that formerly produced only
one kind of product began to expand the types
of media they sold to consumer
Change in attitude by movie producers in the
early 2000s towards collaborating with video
game producers as a way of expanding the
storytelling experience = franchises
Fear over creative control, and the desire for
maximum revenue, makes these collaborations
challenging (9)

29.

What about artists as
producers?
Where do they fit in? With corporations or with the fans?
How do they take advantage of or resist convergence?

30.

Metallica v. Napster, Inc. (2000)

31.

(Taylor's Versions)

32.

Collective Intelligence
• Coalescences of our interactions with media and engagement with the social world of
media participants (other consumers, artists/producers, corporations, the state) leads to a
common, shared, collective intelligence
• "None of us can know everything; each of us knows something; and we can put the pieces
together if we pool our resources and combine our skills. Collective intelligence can be
seen as an alternative source of media power. Right now, we are mostly using this
collective power through our recreational life, but soon we will be deploying those skills for
more "serious" purposes." (4)

33.

Knowledge Communities
• Branch of collective intelligence
• Fans/consumers work with one another to deepen their
understanding of the story/saga/world
• Creation of "knowledge communities" that can be friendly
and/or exclusionary to producers or other fans
• "Knowledge communities form around mutual intellectual
interests; their members work together to forge new
knowledge often in realms where traditional expertise
exists; the pursuit of and assessment of knowledge is at
once communal and adversarial." (20)

34.

Are there any lingering thoughts or questions
about :
Convergence?
Participatory culture?
Collective intelligence?
The participants in this dynamic
(fans, corporations, media
makers/producers)?

35.

Wrap-Up Questions
Jenkins proposes that collective intelligence through media consumption and social
interactions might be a skill we can use for more "serious" (i.e., political) purposes while
acknowledging that not everyone has access or ability to engage with convergence...
1. Is a growing activation of participatory media consumers being used for political
purposes now? Examples?
2. Have the issues he outlined with access & equitability been solved since 2006?

36.

Final Comments
Go to page 24 of Jenkins' text