Book Review: Convergence Culture by Henry Jenkins.

Decker’s a Replicant.

“The older American folk culture was built on borrowings from various mother countries; the modern mass media builds upon borrowings from folk culture; the new convergence culture will be built on borrowings from various media conglomerates.” – Henry Jenkins

“My name is Legion: for we are many.” – Gospel according to Mark, 5:9

In Convergence Culture, USC media guru Henry Jenkins analyzes a shifting cultural landscape and dissects the current particulars regarding audience interaction with mass media. Jenkins uses a hodgepodge of examples drawing from sources such as television (Survivor), film (The Matrix), fiction (Harry Potter), and political campaigns (Howard Dean, Barack Obama) to investigate the nature of modern media and how its axis has shifted radically to allow for remixing, re-interpretation, canonical deviation, and culture jamming on terms established by fans instead of producers. Jenkins also looks at how these practices have influenced producers and media itself.

Jenkins states in the introduction that “If old consumers were assumed to be passive, the new consumers are active.” Example after example presents the new vistas that affordable digital technology and transmission media have opened, and the takeaway is that while “old” media fans could only consume, modern fans can easily reciprocate with their own interpretations of pop culture if they should so choose. Media dispersion, canonical deviation (“Which version of Blade Runner is definitive?!?”), and the nature of knowledge communities are explored in a multi-tiered analysis of what it means to be a fan in the age of configurable media, Facebook, MMORPGs, and Photoshop.

Read the rest of this entry »