Critical reflection on the introductory chapter of Convergence Culture by Henry Jenkins

Reading through the Introduction of Convergence Culture by Henry Jenkins, it is noticeable that Jenkins does not think of convergence as being a principally technologically driven mechanism. Moreover, he states that a cultural shift is occurring whereby the media producers are losing their power at the expense of the media users. It is of course self-evident that consumers play a significant role in the process of convergence, as they decide how media content and media technology will be used, but can we truly state that an active “participatory culture” is more important than the technology and the media producers carrying out the convergence in the first instance? It might be better to put it in a way that these three components are all equally important in the phenomenon of convergence: on the one hand, media producers integrate the voice of the public, use this to develop new ideas and set out the lines of the media offer. On the other, however, media consumers contribute by evaluating the content or product and deciding for themselves what to do with it.

The fact that the media audience is not the exclusive crucial part in this convergence development became clear by reading through Jenkins’ review on the New Orleans Media Experience. People knew little about the coming changes and the event seemed to be set up for the media industry only to inform the public about what was ahead of them.

In this context it is worth noticing that although it might seem as an exclusively positive phenomenon that the broad media offer allows a wide variety of possibilities both for the producers and the consumers, it also should  be taken into account that the process of convergence causes some new sort of difficulties. For instance, producers now experience a new kind of stress caused by their new multifunctional responsibilities.


Bibliography

Jenkings, H. (2006). Convergence Culture: where old and new media collide, revised version. NYU Press.