Convergence Culture – Jenkins
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 o the media consumer interact in unpredictable ways. (2)
Jenkins, Henry. Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide. NYU Press, 2008.
Media Convergence
Jenkins defines media convergence as “[T]he flow of content across multiple media platforms, the cooperation between 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). He is in part discussing media (mediums) such as Web, FtF, still image, etc. and also media as in the news media. This definition refers to content that might begin, for example, as a still image that is distributed via the web and might later be downloaded and used in someone’s video, which might then be posted in a different location. Similarly, once an image or video is publicly accessible, the news (or other) media industry could conceivably obtain it and use it for a given purpose, thus (re)distributing it to a certain area or even internationally. In this example, none of the instances are really using the same or original image; it is repurposed, remediated, and transformed in some manner with each iteration.
To be clear, convergence is not merely this collage of a document being passed on and altered through various media. “Convergence is, in that sense, an old concept taking on new meanings” (6). Essentially, convergence has do with:
- The transformation of media, such as tube televisions fading away in the emergence of flat screen and HD televisions that also change how broadcast content is formatted or analog/antennae-based televisions becoming literally obsolete in favor of all televisions moving to a fully digital format (like the music industry did).
- New delivery methods for information traditionally delivered in a certain manner, such as full-length movies delivered over hand-held devices.
- Producing content in new ways, such as using a cell-phone or hand-held device to shoot video and upload it, as opposed to having a dedicated camera from which one must later hook it to the computer and download the content.
Participatory Culture
That various people in various locations and industries are now not only receiving and passively experiencing the media but are rather taking part in the use, transformation, and redistribution Jenkins refers to as participatory culture. Producers and consumers now “interact with each other according to a new set of rules that none of us fully understands” (3). Such is the way of many situations in which artforms, documents, and documentations (such as rogue videos) are produced and shared.
Collective Intelligence
In the online video conversation (OVC) when applied in the asynchronous online classroom (AOC) for example, students take on a very active role in communication as both consumers and producers of video content. This situation should not be contrasted so much with the FtF classroom in this case, since while instructors tend to lead lectures, students in that setting often ask questions and engage in conversations that (re)direct the topical conversation and thus create a collective intelligence, common education, and knowledge exchange for the class.
However, it is important to note that while certain technologies in our current age may have made it easier for consumers to participate and for convergence to occur, the events take place in the consumers/producers, not in the technology. “Convergence does not occur through media appliances, however sophisticated they may become. Convergence occurs within the brains of individual consumers and through their social interactions with others” (3).
This comes back to the idea of collective intelligence (coined by Pierre Levy) in that there is so much information available to us now that an individual cannot obtain it all. Rather, we each take chunks of it as a social capital to share. “Consumption has become a collective process. … 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” (4).
Paradigm Shift
Jenkins states that as has happened many times before, media is going through a paradigm shift. He discusses the digital revolution paradigm as beginning in the 1990s and exemplified by Nicholas Negroponte’s 1990 bestseller, Being Digital, in which he saw the rise of interactive new media as completely overtaking and displacing the passive old media. Conversely, the convergence paradigm does not see new media as replacing old media, but rather that they will interact in more complex ways.
We see this occurring now even more so than in 2006 when Jenkins published this work. Consider the media industries: newspapers, magazines, and books. In 2006 and currently, we can all acknowledge that the publication of paper copies has greatly reduced in favor of online distribution. However, we now see far more than simple website delivery. The current ubiquity of smart phones and other handheld devices has forced these industries to provide content that is consumable on these devices and with which user can interact with the content using these devices in the form of posting comments or sharing via email and social networking tools. This is now the advent of the Kindle, the iPad, and other ereaders to which media can be directly (and of course wirelessly) sent. Even the websites for most magazines, newspapers, and books are very different that they were when each edition was offered online. Now, sites offer more interactivity options in the form of blogs, forums, discussion boards, etc. and reader areas where readers can upload their own videos, links, images, stories, and more.
This is convergence.