Convergence Culture: A Review
Living in an increasingly technology based society, we are forced to cope with convergence. Storytellers use it to satisfy our creative desires, advertisers use it to keep our wandering minds focused, and product designers use it to make their products more practical. Henry Jenkins explores these topics along with many more in his book “Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide”. Everything in Jenkins’ book is well researched and very informative, albeit very wordy and rather dull. Jenkins’ book is broken into 6 overly lengthy chapters, along with an even more drawn out Introduction, Conclusion, and Afterward. All nine sections discuss different aspects of convergence in media, as well as convergence’s importance in general.
The first two chapters in Jenkins’ book tackle convergence in television shows. The first chapter was a discussion of an online group of Survivor fans that enjoyed “spoiling” different aspects of their favorite show, as well as their reaction to an unknown player who seemed to spoil more then anyone wanted. The second chapter was dedicated to another reality show, American Idol. Jenkins mainly discussed how the internet/television convergence affects the popularity and functionality of the show.
In the third and fourth chapters, Jenkins’ shifts his focus of convergence into storytelling, and more specifically movies. A whole chapter was devoted to the Matrix, and how its trans-media venue was accepted my moviegoers. The matrix was made up of the films, the cartoons, and the comic books. The next chapter was my personal favorite, Quentin Tarantino’s Star Wars? Grassroots Creativity Meets the Media Industry. This chapter discussed how current technology helps encourage creativity and how amateurs have a greater median to share their art.
Chapter 5 discussed what media literacy is and why it is important in our day and age. In order to be media literate, one needs to be able to express their ideas in a form that is not necessarily textually based.
The final chapter is more politically driven, showing how internet/political convergence affects politics in general. This showed how political cartoons, parodies, and photoshoped photos have an affect on elections and people’s view on politicians.
Despite having the bad habit of rambling, Convergence Culture is a powerful textual collection of thoughts based on media convergence and how it affects our lives.
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