This essay is a response to the following question:
In participatory culture the consumer and producer no longer occupy separate roles rather “we might see them as participants who interact with each other according to a new set of rules that none of us fully understand”. Jenkins, Henry, Convergence Culture (London: New York University Press, 2006) 3. Identify a text or series of texts that challenge the previously established rules of engagement between consumer and producer. Outline how that text or texts challenge established rules and also how it/they demonstrate the collapse of the space between consumer and producer in participatory culture. Discuss your analysis through a theoretical framework that draws on related readings.
There have been many developments in the emergence of convergence and participatory culture in recent decades. In these developments, we have seen a complete new set of rules in how consumers and producers interact with each other, and how audience members have converted from being passive to active in their reception of information provided to them by producers. This new paradigm is not purely technological but also cultural as, convergence culture “represents a cultural shift as consumers are encouraged to seek out new information and make connections among dispersed media content” (Jenkins, 2006, Convergence Culture). The technology of course provides the platforms for this new form of interactivity, however it has most certainly moved past the basic technological functions and created a whole new culture and lifestyle for consumers and producers alike.
“The ways in which we are watching TV are thus changing, not just in terms of the increased prominence of interactivity but (disposable inco...
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...perate are at the moment are working and progressively getting even better. As long as the system is operable, why change it? The convergence in recent years has become a cultural aspect of our day to day lives, as more and more audiences are becoming more and more active in what they consume.
Bibliography
Books
Jenkins, H., 2006. Convergence Culture. New York and London: New York University Press.
Fuery, K., 2008. New Media – Culture and Image. USA: Palgrave Macmillan Publications
Jenkins, H., 2009. Confronting the challenges of Participatory Culture; Media Education for the 21st Century. Massachusetts: Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Devereux, E., 2003, Understanding the Media. London: Sage Publications
Articles
Turner, Tay, 2009, Television Studies after TV.
Jermyn, D., Holmes, S., 2006 The Audience is dead, Long live the Audience.
The rhetorical questions are also an attempt to show readers a potential future in which, “people no longer consider the physical world worth watching.” The question of, “Why do so many Americans say they want their children to watch less TV, yet continue to expand the opportunities for them to watch it?”, is a literal depiction of the flawed logic of the American consumer culture. By contrasting the popular belief that too much TV entails serious cognitive drawbacks against the mass purchase of TV’s and other electronics Louv is able to slow walk his readers to the conclusion that most Americans yearn for the distractions of TV and other electronics, rather than reject them. This rhetorical strategy allows Louv to assert that Americans are constantly contradicting themselves without directly accusing any specific group of people of hypocrisy. The additional question, “Why do so many people no longer consider the physical world worth watching?”, underlines Louv’s main point that people are far more concerned with man made distractions rather than environmental
Presently 98% of the households in the United States have one or more televisions in them. What once was regarded as a luxury item has become a staple appliance of the American household. Gone are the days of the three channel black and white programming of the early years; that has been replaced by digital flat screen televisions connected to satellite programming capable of receiving thousands of channels from around the world. Although televisions and television programming today differ from those of the telescreens in Orwell’s 1984, we are beginning to realize that the effects of television viewing may be the same as those of the telescreens.
In assessing the impact and effect of popular cultural forms like MTV, it is important to acknowledge the extent to which, rather than having them imposed upon us, we may instead appropriate or assimilate parts, whilst choosing to reject or ignore the rest. This, of course, has the consumer or viewer acting (or perhaps more accurately interacting) as opposed to simply passively receiving (Philo par 16).Even though critics of MTV stand strongly against the passive consumer, th...
Sandlin, J. A. (2007). Popular culture, cultural resistance, and anticonsumption activism: An exploration of culture jamming as critical education. Wiley InterScience, 115, 73-82.
Up until recently television has been the most prominent medium of entertainment and information in our lives. Nothing could beat Saturday morning cartoons, the six o'clock news and zoning out from the world by the distractions of prime time sitcoms. It is all of these things and more that formed television into what was thought to be the ultimate entertainment medium, that is, up until now. Television in the twenty-first century is not the television our parents watched or in fact what we watched as children. Today’s generation are no longer satisfied with the traditional television experience. Today’s audience no longer has to follow the network’s predetermined schedule nor is television the one dimensional experience it used to be. Viewers no longer need to schedule a fixed time in order to gather information or watch their favourite show (Smith 5). They can record it with the push of the DVR (Digital Video Recording) button or watch it on a device and obtain background information via the Internet. In addition, viewers now have the opportunity to interact with, share, and produce their own material from their favourite show (5). In order to not lose the authenticity of television, media theorists have created transmedia. This new twist on television gives the user more control and more involvement than ever before. The concept has been termed as transmedia storytelling. The online journal Infoline defines transmedia storytelling in its January 2014 issue as “social, mobile, accessible and re-playable.” Originally coined in the 1990’s it was not until 2003 when Henry Jenkins, a professor of communications at the University of Southern California, wrote his article “Transmedia Storytelling” that the term began being ...
Straubhaar, J. Larose, R. Davenport, L (2009) Media Now: Understanding Media, Culture, and Technology Wadsworth: Cengage Learning
It is a culture in which private persons (the public) do not act as consumers only, but also as contributors or producers. We are in a moment of time in which an explosion of new media technology has made it very easy for everyday people to take media in their own hands to create, to share, to express themselves, through every possible media channel. Participatory culture could be defined as new ways of life that lead people to create and circulate new self-made content including video, audio, text, and images. The movement is taking shape and being popularized by consumer social networking sites such as Facebook, Flickr, and Wikipedia that encourage mass participation and collaboration. Participatory culture is changing the way people and the media communicate and actively engage. The characteristic that define modern participatory culture is that consumption is no longer the only way we used media like in the past. We have started to expand our focus to include producing and sharing media too which can be found in any form or content. Example would be fan communities, groups of gamers, the blogging population, and various sub cultures online. What these groups have in common is their supportive environments in which to create and share. There is an assumption that anyone who is currently a reader could become a writer, anyone who is a consumer can become a producer. Participatory culture fostered by new media is like a communication triathlon involving consumption, production, and sharing leads to more knowledge. Many of these tools allow us to remix, recirculate, content from media as a mode of creative expression. There is an informal training process for experienced participants help newbies acquire the skills they need to be...
Campbell, Richard. Media & Culture: an introduction to mass communication. Bedford/St. Martin?s: Boston, N.Y. 2005.
Roscoe, J 2010, ‘Multi-Platform Event Television: Reconceptualizing our Relationship with Television’, The Communication Review, vol. 7, issue. 4, pp. 363-369.
...ely available and accessible from everywhere. New media has introduced innovative platforms and ways to consume media products, they have been embedded into our social context that we are unaware of the different ways we are constantly relying on technology. This leads us to call for more contemporary studies towards new media audiences for a more in-depth analysis and how they have merged the different contexts of media consumption.
The introduction will aim to trace the trajectory of our growing dependence on media and its role in shaping
In fact, most media content are no longer merely artistic and informational – they are meant to engage the masses thus to exert profound influence not only on individual development but also on social advancement. No one can deny that in the contemporary world, media, composed of dynamic and various platforms, is widely perceived to be the predominant means of communication. Noticeably, the term media is first used with the advent of newspaper and magazines; yet with the passage of time, the term is broadened by the inventions of radio, television, video and internet, which are all adapted as forms of media that bring the world closer to us. Indeed, media depends on its wild audience coverage, active public engagement and open, two-way communication to create a highly interactive platform through which “humanity, fully connected, collaboratively build and share a global world”(McLuhan 160).Without doubt, media presents a strong impact upon individual and society in the proc...
Hence, any debate of the future becoming digital must take into consideration the reaction of the media to the technological innovations of the world, from the Personal Computers (PC) to the smallest Smartphone. Although mass media has increased with technological innovations, what driv...
worry about what is media and culture. The question of literacy in the face of such
The evolution of media, from old media to new media, has transformed the way we understand the world around us. New media is interactive and is user-generated while old media is a more traditional way of communicating through television, radio, newspapers, magazines, books, etc (Lecture Notes. January 12, 2011). New media gives us a new perspective by allowing us to interact with one another through the Internet. Media has become much more personal and diverse as user-generated content becomes more prominent in our lives (Lecture Notes. January 24, 2011). We are exposed to various viewpoints shape our understanding and knowledge of the social world, but does the form of media actually affect the way we understand the content which is presented to us? For my paper, I will determine whether or not the medium is the message by analyzing two different types of media sources and how they affect our understanding of the content. For my old media source I have chosen a news clip from the CBS Evening News with Katie Couric that deals with the ongoing Egyptian uprising. For my new media source I have chosen a video blog, or ‘vlog’, by an Egyptian man named Omar who discusses the crisis in Egypt from a personal point of view. Both media sources deal with the same topic, but result in different understandings of the crisis.