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Impact of media convergence
Media convergence and its effects
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Recommended: Impact of media convergence
Ray Taylor
English 231
Dr. Jennifer Boyle
11 December 2014
Convergence Culture and How Harry Potter Changed the World
We live in a society where convergence is the new fad. Everywhere we look, media is converging with other types of media and becoming something new and wonderful. Henry Jenkins, an American media scholar and author of Convergence Culture, states, “We are entering an era where media will be everywhere, and we will use all kinds of media in relation to one another...” (2001). This statement really allowed me a better understanding of what convergence culture is and what we, as a society, do to converge something. This, in turn, lead me to think of what a good example would be that is very relatable and known to our current generation,
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And from all of these, convergence is definitely involved. The three main points of convergence culture are media convergence, participatory culture, and collective intelligence, which all relate back to the Wizarding World in some way, shape, or form.
The Harry Potter series is a force to be reckoned with now-a-days. Even though the book series ended, as well as the movies, it will always continue to leave impacts and grow on top of itself using different media, old and new. When J.K. Rowling wrote the first book, she never thought it would be what it has become today. A New York Times article states, “Here we look at what has become a hugely profitable corporate brand, a fan-fueled sensation and one of the biggest entertainment stories of the last decade” (Dargis and Scott, 2011). A lot of this hype and growth came from the use of media convergence. The definition of media convergence is the combination of new media and old media within a single piece of media work – the coming together of different media products. A good example of this would be how we now use our cellular devices to listen to music. We use the old media idea of personal music players, but we
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Obviously, the Harry Potter fandom has had this happen in the years it has been extremely popular. In this case, it has spread across the whole globe in many different ways and gives everyone who is a fan a sense of collectivism and connection. The books have sold between 400 and 450 million copies, making them one of the best-selling book series in history, and had been translated into 73 languages. The movies were a world-wide phenomenon and there is even an international park in Japan. On page 40 of his article, Jenkins talks about how Harry Potter was attacked by many people and organizations to be banned due to its paganism content, but “the publish industry joined forces with librarians, teachers, and civil libertarians to stave off these attacks on children’s rights to read” (Jenkins, 40). Fans of this franchise have even started a national charity called the Harry Potter Alliance, which supports literacy throughout the nation, and have even recruited Evanna Lynch, who played Luna Lovegood in the Harry Potter movies, to help with their cause. These two examples perfectly portray collective intelligence because they include group of people collaboratively working together in a completion against per say the attackers of this book series or illiteracy in America
Joseph STRAUBHAAR and Robert LaROSE (2001). Media Now. Communications Media in the Information Age. 3rd Edition. Belmont, Wadsworth/Thompson Learning.
...ave evolved about the subject matter of these books. The greatest controversy, though, centers on the series’ religious references, which have caused many parents to despise the “immoral” concepts of the stories and forbid their children from reading these books. Such people feel that Rowling promotes paganism through the magic performed by the characters, and promotes evil through various connections to Satan. Still, Harry Potter does not reflect the practices of Wicca and good always overpowers evil in the end; therefore, we should not be concerned with the effects of the series on children, or even adults. After all, readers have been enjoying stories containing magical references for centuries and humanity has not suffered because of it. Harry Potter is just another magical story and should be enjoyed, rather than judged because of its controversial references.
The Harry Potter series, written by J. K. Rowling, is about a young boy who finds out he is a wizard and uses his magic powers to vanquish evil. The series is currently the target of many protestors, as they scrutinize and penalize the books for their creative and imaginative topics. Ranging from education to religion, protestors' reasoning's behind theses attacks have sparked nationwide debates. Everything from censorship to book burning, protesting and pulling theses books from school shelves, have been done to outlaw the Potter series. Elizabeth D. Schafer, author of "Harry and History", summarizes how these controversies stem forth and how she disagrees with the protests against the Potter series. Censorship of the Harry Potter books is a vain attempt to maintain control and power over citizens as their rights and freedom of choice is being severely violated by forbidding the viewing of certain sources of entertainment.
Rideout, Victoria and Hamel, Elizabeth. (2006). “The Media Family: Electronic Media in the Lives of
Adventures abound as Harry begins his new life learning to be a wizard. The Harry Potter books, four of which have been published, with another three planned, are so hugely popular that the New York Times Book Review was forced to revise their best-seller list in order to appease publishers and authors of adult material. Because the first Harry book dominated the best-seller list since its inception in 1998, children's books must now appear only on t...
Bertolt Brecht asserted, “Art is not a mirror held up to reality, but a hammer with which to shape it.” Art, encompassing all popular culture artifacts, both reflects the society that creates it and is itself an agent capable of changing social reality. Popular culture artifacts, like the Harry Potter series discussed in Nexon and Neumann’s work, Harry Potter and International Relations, exert agency, or causal power over the meaning and interpretation of cultural elements, by influencing the way ideas and values are constructed in everyday life. This paper will demonstrate that popular culture artifacts construct meanings and influence interpretations of reality.
In recent history a cultural phenomenon has occurred. With the rise of Harry Potter, this nation's youth have displayed a “mania” that has not been seen in reference to books for a long time. For example, Barns & Noble America's largest bookseller has recently declared that Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix will be their “largest seller in the history of the entire company” (Mangan). In light of this rise to fame one should note that Harry Potter can and will impact modern culture.
Since the coinage of the term in an MIT Technology Review (2003) article, Henry Jenkins’ theory of transmedia has been significantly contested and edited by multiple media theorists and scholars. In short, transmedia storytelling is the technique of telling a narrative across multiple platforms. The goal of a transmedia project is to heighten the degree in which audiences participate and interact with the events, characters, and storyworld of a franchise. A transmedia project can include, but is not limited to, the use of movies, books, games, social-media, and graphic novels. These elements work together to make the story more enjoyable and contribute to richer fan-engagement. Jenkins’ best summarizes a definition himself in his 2006 book Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide; “A transmedia story unfolds across multiple media platforms with each new text making a distinctive and valuable contribution to the whole” (pp. 95-96).
Croteau, D., Hoynes, W., & Milan, S. (2012). Media/society (4th ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
As mentioned earlier in this paragraph, Pottermore is not the only way which Rowling accessed the area of transmedia storytelling but it has been one of the most successful. As Jeff Gomez, Pottermore creater and transmedia expert, states Pottermore allows the franchise to expand “from its basis in being a repurposed or repeated story world, into being a true transmedia brand.” The website is also multidimensional where it expands out to other popular social media outlets, this allows Rowling to release videos where she answers fans questions and reviel new information about the series. According to Gomez, what makes Pottermore so successful is the amount of interactivity within the site, this means that the audience feel as if they have a personal relationship with the author and also that the have an important imput in the story (Humphrey, 2011). Pottermore shows how websites and todays technology can be used to engage with an audience, and the website has proven to be a huge success not only for J.K. Rowling and the franchise, but also for the area of transmedia
The first Harry Potter book came out in 1997, and no one at the time could imagine that in the 10 years that followed, it would become the most read children’s book and a $6.4 billion worth film franchise. The aim of this essay is to try to explain the reason for the popularity of the Harry Potter books. The aim is also to show the changes that the series caused, how they influenced the people who read them, how they had an impact on literacy and overall, on British popular culture. In the first part of the essay I will briefly explain the beginning of the Harry Potter phenomenon and its growing popularity in the countries all over the world. In the second part I will deal with the character of Harry, explaining why he has such an appeal to the readers and how come people identify with him. In the third part, I will explain the impact Harry Potter books have on society, how they influence young adults and children. The fourth part will deal with the controversies about Harry Potter, the views and thoughts of religious people who see Harry Potter as a book that should be banned. In the fifth part, I will mention the difference the phenomenon caused when it comes to the book business and the film industry of Britain.
The Mass Media is a unique feature of modern society; its development has accompanied an increase in the magnitude and complexity of societal actions and engagements, rapid social change, technological innovation, rising personal income and standard of living and the decline of some traditional forms of control and authority.
Link to lecture and chapter: This chapter is making link with societies. Mass media make changes, marked movement from writing to print. New media creating a lot of changes but other side this can be harmful.
...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 culture of my interest is the Western varies from another, even if they are geographical neighbors or share in common certain cultural characteristics as aforementioned. For instance, if one were to live in the US and visit Mexico, one may notice that people are much closer physically culture referred to sometimes as Western civilization, Western lifestyle or European civilization. This includes a heritage of social norms, ethical values, traditional customs, belief systems, political systems, and specific artifacts and technologies that have some origin or are associated with Europe. (LiveScience, 2012) The western culture features a world of technologies and rational thinking. It is diverse; people enjoy many freedoms in terms of religion, philosophy, and settlement. (LiveScience, 2012). Western culture is a body of knowledge gotten from reason. This emergence of reason has made possible a broad accumulation of understanding related to reality, including human nature. This understanding is shown in many vital ideologies and values, which includes happiness, individualism, science and technology. (LiveScience,2012)