"Fans, Bloggers, Gamers, and Participatory Culture" and "Welcome to Convergence Culture"
Jenkins major ideas in both of these pieces revolve around convergence and commodity culture vs. participatory culture. Jenkins identifies one theory of convergence, "the black box theory," an example of which is the modern cellphone: it collapses a multitude of gadgets into one. However, he believes that it is unlikely that ALL media will converge into one device, as some theorists have suggested. He points out that despite having things like the multi-use cellphone, people today generally have more devices than ever before: televisions, dvd players, computers, cellphones, iPods, etc., all in use simultaneously. He thus suggests that the major point of interest in convergence is participatory culture vs. commodity culture: the top-down structure of corporate production and ever-increasing media ownership consolidation vs. the grassroots, mainly Internet based phenomenon of fan/"layperson" production. He states that convergence is the "the flow of stories, ideas, information, communities, brands, intellectual properties... across media platforms," including both commercial and fan-produced properties.
Jenkins theorizes online fan communities in terms of collective knowledge; "no one knows everything, but everyone knows something," and fans pool their knowledge and resources to create online databases of knowledge and productions. He gives the example of a film critic responding to The Matrix by asking, "Is Joe Popcorn supposed to carry a Matrix concordance in his head?" According to Jenkins, the moviegoer doesn't have to, because he can utilize the collective knowledge databases of online fan communities to remember and make predictions about the plot and characters. Examples of the ways this collective knowledge has been utilized is fans figured out the entire cast, settings, and results of Survivor before the show's airing, or fans becoming bored with Twin Peaks because they could predict plot developments too easily with all the available knowledge. Jenkins also emphasizes that the complexity of today's entertainment necessitates this collective knowledge and also requires more engagement by the viewer; he cites Pokemon, where kids must remember over 200 unique characters' names, appearances, and abilities. He supports the argument presented in Everything Bad is Good for You that this complexity creates a more active and thinking consumer, and goes on to suggest that it also leads to increased participation in fandom (a large portion of which is comprised of the pooling of collective knowledge into easily accessible online databases). He also cites a potential for increasing formal educational skills, such as reading and writing, giving the example of young people writing and "beta reading" (editing) each other's Harry Potter fanfiction, which he suggests helps develop reading and writing skills in a possibly more interesting way than classroom instruction.
He goes on to describe the influence of fan participation on commercial properties, and the tension between corporate ownership and different modes of fan participation. One example he gives is fan-subbing creating an American market for Japanese animation where one had not previously existed; he also mentions the Internet's role in promoted other foreign media, such as Bollywood films and Nigerian-produced videos, as well as petitions by fans to bring back or continue canceled shows exclusively online. However, consumers' apparent willingness to pay for niche market content has not yet been embraced by media corporations; rather, they threaten lawsuits against fans who share programs (including those which have not been picked up for television or licensed for the American market). Jenkins asserts that this stance is hypocritical, as media corporations promote certain forms of fan participation (such as Marvel comics putting pictures of people dressing as The Incredible Hulk on its website) while sanctioning others (suing the developers of the game "City of Heroes" for allowing players to create a character identical to The Hulk). He also suggests that companies have been "ripping off" the intellectual property of others for a long time, citing memos from Marvel to Jack Kirby to make The Hulk look like Universal's Frankenstein. While corporations deem it acceptable to co-opt ideas from one another, they penalize fans for doing the same.
Jenkins suggests that corporations need to embrace fan participation more fully, and not underestimate the desire of fans to generate their own content. He gives examples of successful ventures such as The Sims video game franchise, the Second Life computer game, and the "30-Second Bush" user-generated ad campaign of Move-On.org, all of which depend heavily on users producing new content to keep the game/website/etc. going. Jenkins suggests that the old paradigm of corporate-media-influenced passive consumers vs. "culture-jamming" anti-corporate and media-resistant producers is deficient because it fails to incorporate the idea of fan production and co-optation facilitated by the Internet and other new media technologies; fans seek to influence and shape the media they consume rather than simply accept it or throw it out all together.
I'm a bit embarrassed to admit that I have been a member of many online fan communities and continue to participate to some extent in fan communities to this day. As such, I can relate first hand to Jenkins' frustrations about media corporations resistance to certain modes of fan participation. In my opinion, if fan-produced works provide more publicity for a franchise, why would a company want to block them? I think Jenkins gets to the root of the problem, saying that it's a result of corporations applying old media paradigms to new media products. Jenkins' advocacy of fans shaping corporate content relates back to Freire, emphasizing a populist ideal of consumers (of literature, television, film, etc.) critically interpreting knowledge, rewriting it, and sending it back out into the discourse.
As I've mentioned in other blog postings, I'm also excited about Levy's idea of collective knowledge. I've never thought about how difficult it would be to follow certain programs or understand certain films without the Internet and pooled fan knowledge...I can't image trying to watch something like Heroes, which has multiple complicated plot lines, without being able to go online and catch details I missed or read others' theories about what certain scenes signify. For me, the next step in theorizing collective knowledge is how do we figure out who owns it? I'm definitely in favor of the idea of collective ownership. I was discussing this with my Economics major roommate, who agreed with me, but explained that collective ownership is inefficient because you would have to gain too many people's consent to use the image for profit. My thinking is that it's not necessary or even desirable to profit off of collective knowledge and collective productions, but perhaps that's too idealistic. I do think that removing the profit angle would encourage more experimentation and creativity when it comes to content generated by amateur artists (certainly professional artists need to be able to make a living off of their works). But with the line between professional and amateur increasingly blurred by new media technologies, what is the future of art?
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4 comments:
I remember an interesting point made by Jenkins about the hypocrisy of the companies that take legal action. They often take and "steal" ideas from other companies, slightly modifying them and calling it something new. When an amateur attempts to do the same, they take action against them. It's a game that is played between professionals. However, the power of amateurs are growing and the loyalty base to a company will become ever more important. Continuous legal action can lead to alienation. Just look at what happened to Metallica when they took their stance against Napster. However, as I've stressed before, there often is a discrepancy between fan voice and actual support.
Hey everyone, check out this article on AdAge.com. It's titled "It's Not the Media that Matter, but the Modes" (http://adage.com/cmostrategy/article?article_id=121503)
It's an interesting look at how consumer preferences and behaviors are changing - and how much marketers are paying attention to their new media usage in terms of what they want to do and what they want to get out of their media experience.
Collective knowledge came up in our discussions early, but it's helpful to read Jenkins' (multiple texts) to make connections to convergence and participatory cultures. On your question about collective art-making, I attended the New Media Symposium at UC Berkeley last week and one presentation raised similar concens . Check out DeviantArt.
What are the social implications of participatory culture? I myself am grappling with this question in the face of new media. While the idea of active media consumer engagement and collective intelligence sounds promising and powerful in terms of shifting structures of power and knowledge bases, when does it go too far? What will be the trend in ownership--in the future who will be able to claim what, and how is that idea compliant/antithetical to different global economic systems? In my teach-in, I'm going to try to address issues of copywright infringement and intellectual property laws, so stay tuned!
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