Henry Jenkins Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide (Book review)

There is a reason why writer and critic Howard Rheingold declared Henry Jenkins as the Marshall McLuhan of the 21st century. Like McLuhan, Jenkins’ scholarly work on media and culture has funneled into mainstream conversations, and as a result, his insights about how we live and learn through and with media and technology have affected the way many of us—that is, educators, scholars, and mediamakers—understand the world. Unlike McLuhan whose notoriety spread into mainstream and pop culture circles by the late 1970s largely because of his quirky personality and punchy proverbs like “the medium is the message”, Jenkins has managed to bring his theoretical insights into the mainstream primarily because he is purposeful in engaging popular culture artifacts in a way that is accessible for a variety of audiences.

In Convergence culture: Where old and new media collide (2006), Jenkins employs a familiar method often found in his other foundational texts; he cites popular culture media artifacts as entry points to detangle theory while inviting readers to engage in the study of culture and history. As a way of guiding readers throughout theoretical ideas and conceptual frameworks, Convergence presents several case studies, all of which Jenkins describes as the most successful media franchises in US popular culture, including Survivor, American Idol, The Matrix, Star Wars, and Harry Potter. The 2008 paperback publication includes an Afterword that discusses politics in the YouTube age. These media sites, or ethnographic foci provide readers with a way into understanding what Jenkins means by convergence, that is, a paradigm shift of communication and media landscapes where information flows across multiple grassroots and corporate platforms, and because of these dynamic and uncertain processes our understanding of what it means to participate and collaborate are always in flux. As participation and collaboration change and as “increased interdependence of communication systems” (p. 254) occur, we find that non-experts and non-elites are primary shapeshifters of these media landscapes. Throughout the book, Jenkins challenges readers to think differently about what convergence means, and at times we are left to piece together our own interpretation of this incomplete concept.

While reading through each case study I began to understand that Jenkins’ discussions about convergence culture was also commentary about technological change. Jenkins cites MIT political scientist Ithiel de Sola Pool as the twenty-first century prophet of convergence, and the one who reminds us that technological change does not necessarily mean an inevitable and mechanical shift from one systematic point to the next. Instead, technological change, as predicted by Pool, describes “a period of prolonged transition, during which the various media systems compet[e] and collaborat[e], searching for the stability that would always elude them” (p. 11). Convergence, then, does not so much describe change as it describes tension with change. Using case studies and by analyzing media most familiar and compelling, Jenkins’ aim is to look at how convergence thinking reshapes

American culture. With Convergence Jenkins wishes to appeal to lay audiences as well as industry leaders and policy makers. His goal is not to critique media perspectives on convergence but rather to document these perspectives because, as he argues, “I don’t think we can meaningfully critique convergence until it is more fully understood” (p. 13).

Survivor and Spoiling Cultures

Beginning his analysis with the popular reality TV game show Survivor, Jenkins cites this media franchise to illustrate the impact of spoiling communities and collective intelligence on media production and consumption. Jenkins notes that “[m]apping how these knowledge communities work can help us better understand the social nature of contemporary media consumption” (p. 20). Never before has an audience been able to engage with a television show as it was happening, and even work to “spoil” or reveal secrets about the show’s location and banished contestants. Characteristic of online community forums or spoiling communities is that “[n]o one knows everything, everyone knows something, [and] all knowledge resides in humanity” (quoted on p. 26-27). Jenkins defines collective intelligence as the “ability of virtual communities to leverage the combined expertise of their members” (p. 27). As the notion of community is changing, newer forms of communities begin to emerge, and these sorts of knowledge collectives are necessary in order to restore democratic citizenship. Unfortunately, however, because we have bought into an expert paradigm, argues Jenkins, we see that more Americans “do not participate in public debates” (p. 29). As an alternative, spoiling is a practice wherein “knowledge gets produced and evaluated” via more democratic means (p. 29). In other words, spoiling is like a peer review or vetting process without all the institutionalized formalities that encourage expert knowledge over open and democratized knowledges.

It is fair to argue that the Internet birthed spoiling culture in popular media. When Jenkins wrote Convergence in 2006 he was looking primarily at the ways community boards and forums functioned as spoiling communities. Currently, in 2013, one could argue that Twitter is a type of spoiling community particular in response to TV drama shows like ABC’s Scandal and AMC’s Breaking Bad. Jenkins notes that spoiling is an action that requires sleuthing and investigating, and is characterized as adversarial since “one group [is] trying to get their hands on the knowledge the other group is trying to protect” (p. 43). One could argue that spoiling also takes place on Twitter or Facebook with shows like Big Brother, a similar contestant reality game show like Survivor.

American Idol and Affective Economies

Jenkins’ chapter on American Idol (AI) further explores the ways older and newer media collide, in addition to introducing readers to a concept he calls ‘affective economies’. Affective economies describe the idea that the consumer is “active, emotionally engaged, and socially networked” with/in media content (p. 20). Using AI as a case study, Jenkins highlights the various ways advertisers and networks perceive audiences and manage

viewership. He argues that reality television like Survivor and AI proved to be the “first application of media convergence” (p. 59) because they illustrate the intersection of old (television and radio) and new media (web and mobile telecommunications), and also the multifaceted manner in which transmedia platforms are built and maintained. Jenkins mentions that AI may have also been responsible for getting more Americans “excited about text messaging” (p. 59), thereby ushering in a new (but not so new for Asian and European countries) form of mobile communication to the US-American public.!