Jenkins, Henry

is the founder of Convergence Culture. It all began with the 2006 publication of Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide. Since 2006, Jenkins would go on to start the Confessions of an Aca-Fan blog (Aca for Academic), would write numerous articles, and essentially become the go to guy for all things Convergence Culture.  

Core Concepts/Terminology

Convergence Culture – The relationship between three concepts: media convergence, participatory culture and collective intelligence. The flow of content across multiple media platforms, the cooperation between multiple media industries, and the migratory behavior of media audiences. The description of technological, industrial, cultural and social changes depending on who’s speaking and what they think they are talking bout. Convergence represents a cultural shift as consumers are encouraged to seek out new information and make connections among dispersed media content. (Jenkins 2-3).

Transmedia – The way in which a product is dispersed across multiple technological platforms. Technological platforms exist in a variety of forms such as books, DVDs, streaming content or internet based sources, accessed via DVD players, phones, e-book readers, tablets, computers, etc.

Delivery Technology – What form the media comes to you as, such as a book, a VHS tape or Blu-Ray DVD, a web-series, etc.

Participatory Culture – Think of this as the fan-side of the convergence. What the audience does to participate, which can then be measured through Uses and Gratification theory. Participatory culture is not passive, and it has the ability to affect not only the success of a media product, but also influence the course in which that product, or meme, may evolve.

Corporate Control of Intellectual Property – As a result of transmedia convergence, corporations that produce materials are now at an increased need to maintain control of their product. Illegal downloads, reappropriation of or repurposing of the product by fans due to new technological capabilities have lessened the corporation’s control over their product, forcing them to address and reassess their approach to production. Using the internet for advertising, making games moddable, embracing amateur content, allowing other productions to be made in conjunction with the release of a product, such as video game tie-ins has become a new aspect of the corporate model.

Uses and Gratification Theory (U&G) – Measures what types of technological usage is being utilized to analyze self-efficacy in doing so. Most often, can be described as measuring the amount of labor a person must put into something (uses) in comparison to what the person gets out of it (gratification).

 

Jenkins, Henry Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide 2006

This is essentially the book that starts it all. It’s far too much to try and annotate here, so I am going to list from my notes and highlight several bullet points that will help to explain the concepts within. The book is “about the relationship between three concepts – media convergence, participatory culture, and collective intelligence” (Jenkins 2).

Jenkins is writing in 2006, and he will spend the book exploring convergence culture through the new media of that time. In particular, the advent of phones that will later become smart phones, and their ability to stream videos and provide access to information. He examines reality TV shows such as Survivor and American Idol as a form of new media that is also tied to internet chat rooms and forums.

Twin Peaks and The Matrix  are works of fiction that he sees the internet playing a major role in. David Lynch’s Twin Peaks (1990) was viewed in regards to internet fan sites that sought to explore the almost surrealistic murder mystery and the numerous clues and semiotics employed by Lynch to create the show. Long before JJ Abrams’ shows like Lost, David Lynch pioneered this form of symbolic mystery. Jenkins reads the show through the participatory fan sites that sought to explain and unravel the symbolisms employed by Lynch in the series. Fox’s The X-Files might be another good example of early participatory, internet based fan convergence culture Jenkins mentions.

In particular the openness the Wachowskis took with the Matrix trilogy, not only creating a world full of secrets and symbolism that encouraged viewers to go to the internet and research and theorize about, but also the way in which other filmmakers were allowed to immediately develop animated content in the Animatrix  that was meant to coincide with the events of the movies.  A video game, Enter the Matrix, was released to accompany the second film in which instances in the film were played out in full in the video game. Jada Pinkett Smith as Niobe in Matrix Reloaded was a supporting character. Her story is told in full through the game).

 The following is a handful of quotes and summaries from the Introduction of Convergence Culture that I think are crucial. It should be noted that Jenkins’ 24 page intro serves as the basis of his theory, and that following chapters then apply that theory to some of the phenomena mentioned above. As an 11 year old book, The X-Files, the Matrix Trilogy, Twin Peaks, American Idol may all seem a bit dated now. However, he also discusses the rise of Harry Potter fandom, Star Wars, the rise of internet memes and photoshop usage, and the reality series Survivor, which seems to be as popular as ever.

• “By convergence, I mean the 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. Convergence is a word that manages to describe technological, industrial, cultural, and social changes depending on who’s speaking and what they are talking about” (Jenkins 2-3). It “represents a cultural shift as consumers are encouraged to seek out new information and make connections among dispersed media content” (3).
• Key quote: “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).
• “If the digital revolution paradigm presumed that new media would displace old media, the emerging convergence paradigm assumes that old and new media will interact in even more complex ways… More and more, industry leaders are returning to convergence as a way of making sense of a moment of disorienting change. Convergence is, in that sense, an old concept taking on new meanings” (6).
• “Yet, history teaches us that old media never die – and they don’t necessarily fade way. What dies are simply the tools we use to access media content” (13). Think beta-max to VHS tapes to DVD to Blu Ray, or LP to 8-track to cassette to compact disc to MP3. These are called delivery technologies. They get replaced, but the content keeps evolving. My example of this: there was a backlash against digitally re-mastering music when it was converted to CD. Collectors wanted original monotone recordings of the Beatles in the boxed CD set. However, we may want the digitally re-mastered film version of Frankenstein (1931) if we are going to watch it on an HDTV, because VHS or earlier looks bad on modern televisions. The delivery technology may be important in one study, but not necessarily so in another.
• “Convergence doesn’t just involve commercially produced materials and services traveling along well-regulated and predictable circuits… It also occurs when people take media in their own hands” (17). Jenkins will continue to explain that new media are lowering the costs of production, allowing for more content to be made a faster paces. Tied to this, is also the idea that new media technologies, such as affordable HD Cameras, are allowing non-corporate or independent entities to create content. In a podcast, Jenkins’ and the interviewer discussed the word “amateur” as being rooted in the Latin for “love of doing something.” At the same time, there has been a much greater effort to protect intellectual property as the corporations try to maintain control of a once dominated industry (think copy protection on films). Thus, “Convergence, as we can see, is both a top-down corporate-driven process and a bottom-up consumer-driven process” (18).
• “Collective intelligence refers to this ability of virtual communities to leverage the combined expertise of their members” (27). As a collective effort, we can evolve, expand, or even rewrite media. As example, fan fiction, wikis, or PC game modding.

 

Jenkins, Henry. Q&A: HENRY JENKINS, Author, CONVERGENCE CULTURE: Where Old and New Media Collide. 

Podomatic: 2009. Last Checked April 14, 2017 www.podomatic.com/podcasts/temcnally/episodes/2009-07-21T15_03_43-07_00This podcast has since been removed from the site. It will be provided with permission if possible. 

As noted above, I also listened to a podcast interview with Jenkins about Convergence Culture on Podomatic with Terrence McNally. The only reason I am incorporating  an hour long podcast is because it was a good opportunity for the interviewer to clarify issues, but also to talk about things surrounding the publication of the book that would later become important. In particular was Jenkins’ motivation for writing the book. From an epistemological standpoint, in graduate school Jenkins was discontent with the lack of focus on popular media and culture (it’s not canonical), and that by and large audiences were passive entities in the author/audience dynamic. In contradiction to what he was learning and being told, he would go to cons (comic and/or movie/TV conventions) where cosplay and fan participation was anything but passive.

He also discusses Andrew Slack and The Harry Potter Alliance, thehpalliance.org, and other political movements that are not only part of the convergence associated with the books, but they are “designed to take the stories of Harry Potter and use them as a platform for social change” (Jenkins 5:25). Potter as a character, according to Andrew Slack, is a student who organizes his fellow students to change the world and combat evil. That model then was used to start movements by HPA for gay marriage, anti-bullying campaigns, and even a boycott of the candy company that made the chocolate frogs for unfair labor conditions and was forcing Warner Bros. to choose fair trade companies and manufacturers making products in Harry Potter’s name.

 Along the same lines, at the 22:00 mark of the podcast, he discusses the way The Browncoats, an organized Firefly based group of fans who dress as civil war veterans from the series known as “browncoats” helped to promote the release of Joss Whedon’s Serentiy (2005) by going to cons and malls in their costumes and telling people about the movie. They received a cease and desist order from Universal Pictures with a lawsuit and monetary damages were threatened if they didn’t. The Browncoats responded by using social media to ask every member to calculate the hours they spent promoting the film in costume, and they sent Universal a bill for their hours. The point being that the bill the Browncoats sent was far higher than the monetary damages they were about to be sued for.

In terms of convergence culture, both of these examples are showing the way that the explosion outward from the original source, a book or a TV series in these examples, begins to create an evolving network of participating fans. These fans then use technology (internet, social media, in person contacts and meetings at cons, etc.) to recruit and begin new movements. In one example, we see where Harry Potter is being used as a catalyst for political change, in the other the way in which fans are directly influencing a corporation’s product, or more specifically, the success of a somewhat unknown film being released.

Talking about the game Pokémon around the 28:00 mark he explains that Pokémon is actually more complex than the periodic table, yet small children learn and memorize all of this information. What is interesting that, though a long running anime series also feeds kids the information, it is actually the playground where the social network exists for the kids. The playground, as opposed to the internet, serves as the sort of Bourdieu field in which Pokémon is discussed and information is shared. So, social networks are also about real world networks. If educators are complaining that kids can’t memorize twelve Greek gods, then how do we explain this phenomenon? Do educators need to reassess how children should be taught today?

 

Jenkins, Henry. Rethinking ‘Rethinking Convergence/Culture.’

This article was informative for the fact that Jenkins seems to have spent a great deal of time having to defend Convergence Culture. It is also proof that in 25 pages or so, Jenkins can start another ten year worth of debate and provide ten or more , heavy, philosophical and epistemological debates. After its release, many articles were written that criticized it, applauded it but added criticism of it, or heralded it as the greatest thing ever but acknowledged that Jenkins had overlooked this or that particular theoretical valence. So, again, I redirect you to the key quote in Convergence Culture in which Jenkins says, “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).

This article references numerous criticisms of the book, too many to get into, and Jenkins cites 15 of his own works that have served to expand upon the book (which could be a convergence culture study in and of itself) either defending aspects of his theories that are overlooked, or at times admitting there needs to be more research in such and such area. He also cites numerous authors who have also expanded upon participatory culture. Participatory Culture is Convergence Culture that is focusing on, you guessed it, participant’s participation and the means they use to do so. What is of the greatest importance is that this article is highlighting Jenkins’ later interest in the way convergence/participatory culture and the internet is fueling political and activist movements throughout the world.

I included this paper because it also serves as an example of how Convergence Culture and participation are being explored across a wide variety of disciplines. On page 271, Jenkins describes a handful of disciplines that are using convergence and participatory culture theory for different reasons: 

Politics – Citing Manuel Castells’ research into grassroots movements’ use of the internet and social media as a “key tool for their struggles.”

Arts – Artists’ various use of crowdsourcing  or participatory design processes.

Journalism – Traditional news sources “making peace with” and adapting to new methods of “citizen journalism” (blogging, twitter feeds, etc.).

Education – The Digital Media and Learning movement has reshaped education by     employing “connected learning” and making sure students have the skills to participate.

Health – Online movements to create a space where patients can share health information and “compare notes” to “assert greater control over their own treatment.”

Management Studies – Creating stronger “horizontal networks” that allow employees to participate and have a greater stake in the decision making processes and directions that their companies are going/taking.

Entertainment – Integrating notions and practices of audience engagement and fan    participation.

 

A few other key quotes are…

“Instead, Convergence Culture argues that any democratic potentials held by grassroots media production and circulation coexist with increasing concentrated mass media, hence the subtitle ‘where old and new media collide'” (270).

He points to how scholarly discourse works, and is changing due to the internet, when Jenkins says,

 “The timetables of peer-reviewed scholarly publication make it almost impossible for these kinds of meaningful exchanges to take place between researchers with  different ideological visions or theoretical commitments. Though we are debating     the best frameworks for discussing contemporary and emerging media practices, this debate will have unfolded across a decade by the time this response is             published in the pages of Cultural Studies.” (Jenkins 274-275)

 

Conclusion of Jenkins

As you can see what started out as a 300 page book has since grown into a somewhat revolutionary approach to cultural analysis. To add to this, Jenkins has written other books, maintains a blog, lectures and presents at conferences, and has been featured in numerous podcasts and interviews expounding upon these theories. I hinted at this earlier, but this is also another aspect of convergence culture in that we can now say the book never ends. Because of technological changes in discourse, the fact that we can now have a web chat or forum with Henry Jenkins, the book continues to evolve and grow at a much quicker rate in terms of accessibility. Theory now evolves at the speed of technological information dissemination.

 

Additional Theorists and Texts

 Carpentier, Nico

Contextualizing Author-Audience Convergences: ‘New’ technologies’ claims to increased participation, novelty and uniqueness.

            This article is tackling Henry Jenkins’ Convergence Culture in terms of what Carpentier sees as a lack of focus (or even understanding) on the part of interaction/participation dimension of audience theory in convergence theories. Carpentier begins with a focus on the active/passive and micro/macro audience dimensions and uses and gratification theory. What Carpentier finds lacking in Jenkins’ and others’ theories is that there is a hidden dimension within the active/passive dimension he calls the “participation/interaction dimension” (Carpentier 519). Simply put, audiences are not really passive, we are always doing something, even if that something is as simple as making the choice to read/watch/listen/observe this book/show/song/performance in front of us. He further breaks this down by saying that participation is then comprised of “access to, interaction with and participation in the media organization” (521).  He will argue that we need to reframe our way of thinking about audience in convergence theory, and suggests that we ask “Do new media environments allow for more intense forms of participation in media productions, or do these new media ‘merely’ increase interaction with media organizations and content?” (523).

 

Axelrod, Robert

 Dissemination of Culture: A Model with Local Convergence and Global Polarization

            Axelrod is looking at the ways in which culture is maintained, perpetuated or otherwise disseminated. His primary question is that “if people tend to  become more alike in their beliefs and attitudes, why do not all such differences eventually disappear?” (Axelrod 203). Axelrod is looking at the mechanisms that already exist to explain this phenomenon, and in particular wants to propose a mechanism that can explain why convergence culture stops before completion (otherwise the differences would cease to exist). Mechanisms that already serve to explain this phenomenon are:

• Social Differentiation (Simmel, Barth, Hannan) – Groups that actively differentiate themselves or emphasize or promote differences (ex. conspicuous consumption and how it plays out in ethnic groups).
• Fads and Fashions – A chase between differentiating one’s self through fashion fads and trends, being copied, further differentiation one’s self, etc. (ex. punk subculture)
• Preference for Extreme Views – Tendencies toward extreme positions on issues, and can lead to polarization or clustering (ex. gun laws, immigration, etc.)
• Drift – Random changes in traits that can lead to differentiation among subgroups (ex. language).
• Geographic Isolation – people cluster with others like themselves, and can lead to segregation (ex. Marshallese)
• Specialization – People may have interests at least partially resistant to social influence. The resistance may be modeled as a factor that reamins despite society’s influence (ex. religion).
• Changing Environment or Technology – If the environment is constantly changing, the response may be as well. If it changes faster than people can respond to it, then differences may persist or arise (ex. Smart phone culture)

 

Axelrod’s model “abstracts this fundamental principle to say that communication is most effective between similar people… that a given cultural feature will spread from one individual (or group) to another depends on how many other features they may already have in common (205).

 

Chuang, Yu-Wei

Toward and Understanding of Uses and Gratifications Theory and the Sense of Virtual Community on Knowledge Sharing in Online Game Communities.  

            This short, but highly informative article details the concepts of Uses and Gratifications Theory (U&G). Essentially, U&G “endeavors to explain what social and psychological needs stimulate audiences to select particular social media (e.g. virtual communities) channels and content choices” (Chuang 472). This tied with social cognitive theory, which seeks to explain how self-efficacy determines or affects behaviors due to “trade-offs between required effort and motivation” (473). Simply put, what are the benefits and rewards that I get in exchange for what level of participation or effort I put into the community.

            As this article relates this to online gaming communities,  Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games (MMORPG) require both individual skill as a player, and teamwork as a group to overcome obstacles, succeed in combat, and solve quests. The gamers will find associations, either in-game or online, to learn how to defeat monsters or solve quests. Their preference for the form that takes is determined by UGT. Some will simply read posts in online forums, other will join guilds in game that collect information on membership only websites outside of the game, and/or social media may be involved (Facebook, Twitter, etc.). The amount of participation (I do one medium or all mediums for a few hours a week or several hours a week) can then be determined by the payoff for participation. In terms of world building and community building, this has become increasingly more important in analyzing convergence culture associated with online practices.

 

Joo, Jihyuk and Sang, Yoonmo

Exploring Koreans’ smartphone usage: An integrated model of the technology acceptance model and uses and gratifications theory.

            Like the Chuang article, Joo and Yoonmo are using Uses and Gratifications theory (UGT) to explore Korean’ smartphone usage. They are also employing another theoretical valence called the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM). TAM is built upon the Theory of Reasoned Action (TRA) which basically says behavior is the result one’s “attitude and subjective norms regarding the behavior” (Joo and Yoonmo 2513). So, it’s not necessarily “My intention is X, therefore my behavior is X,” because I am also subject to outside influences that can affect both my behavior an intention. This is crucial as part of this study is not just looking at Korean’s smartphone usage, but also why Koreans get new smartphones every 12 months, making Korea the highest rollover for smartphone sales in the world. TAM seeks to explain why users adapt certain technologies based on their intentions and behaviors. So, TAM would be useful in explaining  the divide between Mac and PC, or I-Phones and Android phones. Media usage can also be divided into two areas: Ritualized (social media, companions sites, etc.) and Instrumental (news sites, stockmarket sites, etc.). By combining UGT, “what I get out of it for what I put into it,” TAM and TRA, “why my intentions affect my behaviors in determining my actions,” Joo and Yoonmo have created a model that further explains transmedia phenomenon and choices. For example, why would younger audiences prefer phones and tablets over PCs and televisions?

 

Turner, Graeme

“Surrendering the Space: Convergence culture, Cultural Studies and the curriculum.”             Cultural Studies, Vol. 25, Nos. 4-5, 2011, pp. 685-699

            I am including this because much of Convergence Culture is being contested and critiqued in the academic community, and this article reflects the scholarly debate over these theories. Note that Jenkins has responded directly to Turner on numerous occasions, and there seems to be a personal debate going on between the two scholar’s discourse. Turner is discussing the way new programs are being created in universities called Convergence Culture programs. At the same time Convergence Culture is becoming a big part of a lot of Cultural Studies programs. Turner’s contention is that no one denies that convergence is taking place, but that it is excessive in its claims and that it looks to him to be “about 20 percent fact and 80 percent speculative fiction… The claims made for its significance are as dramatic as they are unconvincing” (Turner 686). In a nutshell, Turner seems to represent the old guard of Cultural Studies and from an academic perspective is concerned that newer emerging Convergence Culture programs are displacing Cultural Studies programs in universities. He argues that while some may posit that Convergence Culture is essentially a new Cultural Studies approach, Turner argues that it is not, “I only came across a tiny handful of course units which even mentioned Cultural Studies, let alone situated it as an enabling or core discipline” (695).

            The reason I feel this article is worth mentioning is that Convergence Culture is also a new epistemological approach, and one that seems antithetical to the way scholars such as ourselves have been taught and trained to do research. Where many disciplinary scholars are taught, sometimes even forced to, narrow their scope of research, Convergence Culture actually makes us explode the research, leaving us as scholars, and our professors as teachers with a conundrum of how to approach this subject. Simply put, strategies have to be developed to avoid the 300 page class paper, while at the same time Convergence Culture almost needs us to write the 300 page paper. My answer or suggestion is to reflect back to Jenkins key quote, “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” (Jenkins 4). Write small and add it to the pool is really how Convergence Culture should be done.

 

Ouellette, Laurie and Wilson, Julie

“Womens Work: Affective labour and convergence culture.” Cultural Studies, Vol. 25, Nos. 4- 5, 2011, pp. 548-565.

            This article is interesting because it is discussing public and private spheres for women. It is very similar to Lauren Berlant’s The Queen of America goes to Washington City in many ways, though they never mention this book, in that they are looking at the way Dr. Phil, as a television series, self-help book franchise, and online resource are essentially another instance in which the woman’s private sphere is being made public (as a self-help series), and as a result is increasing the amount of labor for women in the private sphere of family management and childrearing by requiring them to be more informed and knowledgeable of what Dr. Phil posits. So much of Convergence Culture is based on the U&G aspect, specifically gratification, or what Oullette and Wilson are describing as “pleasure.” However, having to keep up with the Dr. Phil knowledge base is not necessarily a pleasurable or gratifying thing for women, but rather one more thing they may be required to learn. So, Dr. Phil  may be less recreational participation, fandom, and may be seen as required participation. This article then serves to illuminate that Convergence Culture’s focus on fandom is overlooking more mundane or less definitive areas of culture. Instead, fandom is replaced by a gendered “neoliberal citizenship” that is adding a “second shift” to the unpaid labor of the woman in homemaking.