Convergence Culture. Henry Jenkins

      

       Praise for the Hardcover Edition

       2007 Choice Outstanding Academic Title

      “The standard convergence narrative of recent years presents media concentration as a threat both to the diversity of communication channels and to individuals’ opportunities to engage in public discourse. A respected and well-established media scholar, Jenkins (MIT) here counters such pessimistic perspectives on the brave new media world with theoretical and evidentiary attestations to the growing power of individuals and grassroots groups to affect the larger media landscape.”

      —Choice

      “Jenkins tries to bring clarity to cultural changes that are melting and morphing into new shapes on an hourly, daily, weekly, monthly basis. Convergence Culture provides a view that looks at the restless ocean and tracks the currents rather than just looking at the individual rocks on the beach.”

      —The McClatchy Newspapers

      “I thought I knew twenty-first-century pop media until I read Henry Jenkins. The fresh research and radical insights in Convergence Culture deserve a wide and thoughtful readership. Bring on the ‘monolithic block of eyeballs!’”

      —Bruce Sterling, author, blogger, visionary

      “Henry Jenkins offers crucial insight into an unexpected and unforeseen future. Unlike most predictions about how New Media will shape the world in which we live, the reality is turning out far stranger and more interesting than we might have imagined. The social implications of this change could be staggering.”

      —Will Wright, designer of SimCity and The Sims

      “One of those rare works that is closer to an operating system than a traditional book: it’s a platform that people will be building on for years to come. What’s more, the book happens to be a briskly entertaining read—as startling, inventive, and witty as the culture it documents.”

      —Steven Johnson, author of the national best-seller Everything Bad Is Good for You

      “I simply could not put this book down! Henry Jenkins provides a fascinating account of how new media intersects old media and engages the imagination of fans in more and more powerful ways. Educators, media specialists, policy makers and parents will find Convergence Culture both lively and enlightening.”

      —John Seely Brown, former chief scientist, Xerox Corp. and director of Xerox PARC

      Henry Jenkins

       Convergence Culture

       Where Old and New Media Collide

      Updated and with a New Afterword

      NEW YORK UNIVERSITY PRESS

      New York and London

       www.nyupress.org

      © 2006 by New York University

      All rights reserved

      First published in paperback in 2008.

      Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

      Jenkins, Henry, 1958–

      Convergence culture : where old and new media collide / Henry Jenkins.

      p. cm.

      Includes bibliographical references and index.

      ISBN-13: 978-0-8147-4281-5 (cloth : alk. paper)

      ISBN-10: 0-8147-4281-5 (cloth : alk. paper)

      ISBN-13: 978-0-8147-4295-2 (pbk. : alk. paper)

      ISBN-10: 0-8147-4295-5 (pbk. : alk. paper)

      1. Mass media and culture—United States. 2. Popular culture—United States.

      I. Title.

      P94.65.U6J46 2006

      302.230973—dc22 2006007358

      New York University Press books are printed on acid-free paper, and their binding materials are chosen for strength and durability. We strive to use environmentally responsible suppliers and materials to the greatest extent possible in publishing our books.

      Manufactured in the United States of America

      c 10

      p 1098765432

       Contents

       Acknowledgments

       Introduction: “Worship at the Altar of Convergence”: A New Paradigm for Understanding Media Change

       1 Spoiling Survivor: The Anatomy of a Knowledge Community

       2 Buying into American Idol: How We Are Being Sold on Reality Television

       3 Searching for the Origami Unicorn: The Matrix and Transmedia Storytelling

       4 Quentin Tarantino’s Star Wars? Grassroots Creativity Meets the Media Industry

       5 Why Heather Can Write: Media Literacy and the Harry Potter Wars

       6 Photoshop for Democracy: The New Relationship between Politics and Popular Culture

       Conclusion: Democratizing Television? The Politics of Participation

       Afterword: Reflections on Politics in the Age of YouTube

       YouTubeOlogy

       Notes

       Glossary

       Index

       About the Author

       Acknowledgments

      Writing this book has been an epic journey, helped along by many hands. Convergence Culture is in many ways the culmination of the past eight years of my life, an outgrowth of my efforts to build up MIT’s Comparative Media Studies Program as a center for conversations about media change (past, present, and future) and of my efforts to enlarge public dialogues about popular culture and contemporary life. A fuller account of how this book emerged from the concerns of Textual Poachers: Television Fans and Participatory Culture (New York: Routledge, 1991) and was shaped by my intellectual growth over the past decade can be found in the introduction to my anthology Fans, Gamers, and Bloggers: Exploring Participatory Culture (New York: New York University Press, 2006).

      Given that history, it is perhaps appropriate that my first set