Henry Jenkins

Convergence Culture maps a new territory: where old and new media intersect, where grassroots and corporate media collide, where the power of the consumer interact in unpredictable ways.

Where Old and New Media Collide

Convergence Culture

Joshua Green

Sam Ford

Spreadable Media maps fundamental changes taking place in our contemporary media environment, a space where corporations no longer tightly control media distribution and many of us are directly involved in the circulation of content. It contrasts “stickiness”—aggregating attention in centralized places—with “spreadability”—dispersing content widely through both formal and informal networks,some approved, many unauthorized. Stickiness has been the measure of success in the broadcast era (and has been carried over to the online world), but “spreadability” describes the ways content travels through social media. Following up on the hugely influential Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide, this book challenges some of the prevailing metaphors and frameworks used to describe contemporary media, from biological metaphors like “memes” and “viral” to the concept of “Web 2.0” and the popular notion of “influencers.” Spreadable Media examines the nature of audience engagement,the environment of participation, the way appraisal creates value,and the transnational flows at the heart of these phenomena. It delineates the elements that make content more spreadable and highlights emerging media business models built for a world of participatory circulation. The book also explores the internal tensions companies face as they adapt to the new communication reality and argues for the need to shift from “hearing” to “listening” in corporate culture. Drawing on examples from film, music, games, comics, television,transmedia storytelling, advertising, and public relations industries,among others—from both the U.S. and around the world—the authors illustrate the contours of our current media environment.They highlight the vexing questions content creators must tackle and the responsibilities we all face as citizens in a world where many of us regularly circulate media content. Written for any and all of us who actively create and share media content, Spreadable Media provides a clear understanding of how people are spreading ideas and the implications these activities have for business, politics, and everyday life.

Creating Value and Meaning in a Networked Culture

Spreadable Media

"Get a life" William Shatner told Star Trek fans. Yet, as Textual Poachersargues, fans already have a "life," a complex subculture which draws its resources from commercial culture while also reworking them to serve alternative interests. Rejecting stereotypes of fans as cultural dupes, social misfits, and mindless consumers, Jenkins represents media fans as active producers and skilled manipulators of program meanings, as nomadic poachers constructing their own culture from borrowed materials, as an alternative social community defined through its cultural preferences and consumption practices. Written from an insider's perspective and providing vivid examples from fan artifacts, Textual Poachers offers an ethnographic account of the media fan community, its interpretive strategies, its social institutions and cultural practices, and its troubled relationship to the mass media and consumer capitalism. Drawing on the work of Michel de Certau, Jenkins shows how fans of Star Trek, Blake's 7, The Professionals, Beauty and the Beast, Starsky and Hutch, Alien Nation, Twin Peaks, and other popular programs exploit these cultural materials as the basis for their stories, songs, videos, and social interatctions. Addressing both academics and fans, Jenkins builds a powerful case for the richness of fan culture as a popular response to the mass media and as a challenge to the producers' attempts to regulate textual meanings. Textual Poachersguides readers through difficult questions about popular consumption, genre, gender, sexuality, and interpretation, documenting practices and processes which test and challenge basic assumptions of contemporary media theory.

Television Fans & Participatory Culture

Textual Poachers

Shifting the conversation about the "digital divide" from questions of technological access to questions about opportunities for being involved in participatory culture and acquiring the necessary skills.

Media Education for the 21st Century

Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture

Henry Jenkins at Authors@Google (video) Henry Jenkins“s pioneering work in the early 1990s promoted the idea that fans are among the most active, creative, critically engaged, and socially connected consumers of popular culture and that they represent the vanguard of a new relationship with mass media. Though marginal and largely invisible to the general public at the time, today, media producers and advertisers, not to mention researchers and fans, take for granted the idea that the success of a media franchise depends on fan investments and participation. Bringing together the highlights of a decade and a half of groundbreaking research into the cultural life of media consumers, Fans, Bloggers, and Gamers takes readers from Jenkins's progressive early work defending fan culture against those who would marginalize or stigmatize it, through to his more recent work, combating moral panic and defending Goths and gamers in the wake of the Columbine shootings. Starting with an interview on the current state of fan studies, this volume maps the core theoretical and methodological issues in Fan Studies. It goes on to chart the growth of participatory culture on the web, take up blogging as perhaps the most powerful illustration of how consumer participation impacts mainstream media, and debate the public policy implications surrounding participation and intellectual property.

Exploring Participatory Culture

Fans, Bloggers, and Gamers

Danah Boyd

Mizuko Ito

In the last two decades the conception and practice of participatory culture have been transformed by the new affordances enabled by digital, networked and mobile technologies. This exciting new book explores that transformation by bringing together three leading figures in conversation. Jenkins, Ito and boyd examine the ways in which our personal and professional lives are shaped by experiences interacting with and around emerging media. Stressing the social and cultural contexts of participation, the authors describe the process of diversification and mainstreaming that has transformed participatory culture. They advocate a move beyond individualized personal expression, and argue for an ethos of 'doing it together' in addition to 'doing it yourself' Participatory Culture in a Networked Era will interest students and scholars of digital media and their impact on society. It will engage readers in a broader dialogue and conversation about their own participatory practices in this digital age.

A Conversation on Youth, Learning, Commerce, and Politics

Participatory Culture in a Networked Era

Arely Zimmerman

Liana Gamber-Thompson

Neta Kligler-Vilenchik

Sangita Shresthova

"There is a widespread perception that the foundations of American democracy are dysfunctional and little is likely to emerge from traditional politics that will shift those conditions. Youth are often seen as emblematic of this crisis--frequently represented as uninterested in political life and ill-informed about current-affairs. By Any Media Necessary offers a profoundly different picture of contemporary American youth. Young men and women are tapping into the potential of new forms of communication, such as social media platforms and spreadable videos and memes, seeking to bring about political change--by any media necessary. In a series of case studies covering a diverse range of organizations, networks, and movements--from the Harry Potter Alliance, which fights for human rights in the name of the popular fantasy franchise, to immigration-rights advocates using superheroes to dramatize their struggles--By Any Media Necessary examines the civic imagination at work. Exploring new forms of political activities and identities emerging from the practice of participatory culture, By Any Media Necessary reveals how these shifts in communication have unleashed a new political dynamism in American youth."--Book jacket.

The New Youth Activism

By Any Media Necessary

What Made Pistachio Nuts?

SUSANA ALEXANDRIA

Henry Jenkins investiga o alvoroço em torno das novas mídias e expõe as importantes transformações culturais que ocorrem à medida que esses meios convergem. Ele nos introduz aos fãs de Harry Potter, que estão escrevendo suas próprias histórias, enquanto os executivos se debatem para controlar a franquia. Ele nos mostra como o fenômeno Matrix levou a narrativa a novos patamares, criando um universo que junta partes da história entre filmes, quadrinhos, games, websites e animações.

Cultura da convergência

The twentieth anniversary edition of Henry Jenkins's Textual Poachers brings this now-canonical text to a new generation of students interested in the intersections of fandom, participatory culture, popular consumption and media theory. This reissue of what's become a classic work includes an interview between Jenkins and Suzanne Scott and a supplemental study guide by Louisa Stein, encouraging students to consider fan cultures in relation to consumer capitalism, genre, gender, sexuality, interpretation and more.

Television Fans and Participatory Culture

Kristine Brunovska Karnick

Applies the recent `return to history' in film studies to the genre of classical Hollywood comedy as well as broadening the definition of those works considered central in this field.

Classical Hollywood Comedy

David Thorburn

Brad Seawell

Essays on media change past and present, with examples ranging from religious pamphleteers of the seventeenth century to the World Wide Web.

The Aesthetics of Transition

Rethinking Media Change

Considers how comics display our everyday stuff—junk drawers, bookshelves, attics—as a way into understanding how we represent ourselves now For most of their history, comics were widely understood as disposable—you read them and discarded them, and the pulp paper they were printed on decomposed over time. Today, comic books have been rebranded as graphic novels—clothbound high-gloss volumes that can be purchased in bookstores, checked out of libraries, and displayed proudly on bookshelves. They are reviewed by serious critics and studied in university classrooms. A medium once considered trash has been transformed into a respectable, if not elite, genre. While the American comics of the past were about hyperbolic battles between good and evil, most of today’s graphic novels focus on everyday personal experiences. Contemporary culture is awash with stuff. They give vivid expression to a culture preoccupied with the processes of circulation and appraisal, accumulation and possession. By design, comics encourage the reader to scan the landscape, to pay attention to the physical objects that fill our lives and constitute our familiar surroundings. Because comics take place in a completely fabricated world, everything is there intentionally. Comics are stuff; comics tell stories about stuff; and they display stuff. When we use the phrase “and stuff” in everyday speech, we often mean something vague, something like “etcetera.” In this book, stuff refers not only to physical objects, but also to the emotions, sentimental attachments, and nostalgic longings that we express—or hold at bay—through our relationships with stuff. In Comics and Stuff, his first solo authored book in over a decade, pioneering media scholar Henry Jenkins moves through anthropology, material culture, literary criticism, and art history to resituate comics in the cultural landscape. Through over one hundred full-color illustrations, using close readings of contemporary graphic novels, Jenkins explores how comics depict stuff and exposes the central role that stuff plays in how we curate our identities, sustain memory, and make meaning. Comics and Stuff presents an innovative new way of thinking about comics and graphic novels that will change how we think about our stuff and ourselves.

Comics and Stuff

John Tulloch

Graham Tulloch

Examines the continuing popularity of two television institutions through their fans and followers.

Watching Doctor Who and Star Trek

Science Fiction Audiences

Justine Cassell

Girls and computer games--and the movement to overcome the stereotyping that dominates the toy aisles. Many parents worry about the influence of video games on their children's lives. The game console may help to prepare children for participation in the digital world, but at the same time it socializes boys into misogyny and excludes girls from all but the most objectified positions. The new "girls' games" movement has addressed these concerns. Although many people associate video games mainly with boys, the girls games' movement has emerged from an unusual alliance between feminist activists (who want to change the "gendering" of digital technology) and industry leaders (who want to create a girls' market for their games). The contributors to From Barbie® to Mortal Kombat explore how assumptions about gender, games, and technology shape the design, development, and marketing of games as industry seeks to build the girl market. They describe and analyze the games currently on the market and propose tactical approaches for avoiding the stereotypes that dominate most toy store aisles. The lively mix of perspectives and voices includes those of media and technology scholars, educators, psychologists, developers of today's leading games, industry insiders, and girl gamers. Contributors Aurora, Dorothy Bennett, Stephanie Bergman, Cornelia Brunner, Mary Bryson, Lee McEnany Caraher, Justine Cassell, Suzanne de Castell, Nikki Douglas, Theresa Duncan, Monica Gesue, Michelle Goulet, Patricia Greenfield, Margaret Honey, Henry Jenkins, Cal Jones, Yasmin Kafai, Heather Kelley, Marsha Kinder, Brenda Laurel, Nancie Martin, Aliza Sherman, Kaveri Subrahmanyam

Gender and Computer Games

From Barbie to Mortal Kombat

Every major political and social dispute of the twentieth century has been fought on the backs of our children, from the economic reforms of the progressive era through the social readjustments of civil rights era and on to the current explosion of anxieties about everything from the national debt to the digital revolution. Far from noncombatants whom we seek to protect from the contamination posed by adult knowledge, children form the very basis on which we fight over the nature and values of our society, and over our hopes and fears for the future. Unfortunately, our understanding of childhood and children has not kept pace with their crucial and rapidly changing roles in our culture. Pulling together a range of different thinkers who have rethought the myths of childhood innocence, The Children's Culture Reader develops a profile of children as creative and critical thinkers who shape society even as it shapes them. Representing a range of thinking from history, psychology, anthropology, sociology, economics, women's studies, literature, and media studies, The Children's Culture Reader focuses on issues of parent-child relations, child labor, education, play, and especially the relationship of children to mass media and consumer culture. The contributors include Martha Wolfenstein, Philippe Aries, Jacqueline Rose, James Kincaid, Lynn Spigel, Valerie Walkerdine, Ellen Seiter, Annette Kuhn, Eve Sedgwick, Henry Giroux, and Nancy Scheper-Hughes. Including a groundbreaking introduction by the editor and a sourcebook section which excerpts a range of material from popular magazines to child rearing guides from the past 75 years, The Children's Culture Reader will propel our understanding of children and childhood into the next century.

The Children's Culture Reader

Essa máxima simples, mas definitiva, norteia a análise de três renomados pensadores atuais da mídia moderna - entre eles Henry Jenkins, autor do referencial Cultura da Convergência (Aleph) - sobre o futuro da circulação de conteúdo nos meios de comunicação social e digital. Vivemos uma mudança de paradigma na mídia: a passagem de uma mentalidade regulada pela lógica da radiodifusão, que dominou todo o século 20, para outra em que o controle sobre a produção e a distribuição cultural já não é tão rígido; uma nova proposição que permite e valoriza o engajamento das audiências. Hoje, as pessoas não se limitam ao simples papel de consumidor. Discutem, reagem, espalham seus interesses e críticas pelas diferentes modalidades de mídia. Querem ser ouvidas, atendidas, recompensadas. Entre as muitas possibilidades dessa cultura cada vez mais ligada em rede, há pelo menos uma grande certeza: será mais bem-sucedido quem souber lidar melhor com as aspirações e desejos de um público ávido por participar e opinar.

Criando valor e significado por meio da mídia propagável

Cultura da Conexão

Henry Jenkins's pioneering work in the early 1990s promoted the idea that fans are among the most active and socially connected consumers of popular culture. This volume maps the core theoretical and methodological issues in fan studies, and also charts the growth of participatory culture on the Web.

Gabriel Peters-Lazaro

How popular culture is engaged by activists to effect emancipatory political change One cannot change the world unless one can imagine what a better world might look like. Civic imagination is the capacity to conceptualize alternatives to current cultural, social, political, or economic conditions; it also requires the ability to see oneself as a civic agent capable of making change, as a participant in a larger democratic culture. Popular Culture and the Civic Imagination represents a call for greater clarity about what we’re fighting for—not just what we’re fighting against. Across more than thirty examples from social movements around the world, this casebook proposes “civic imagination” as a framework that can help us identify, support, and practice new kinds of communal participation. As the contributors demonstrate, young people, in particular, are turning to popular culture—from Beyoncé to Bollywood, from Smokey Bear to Hamilton, from comic books to VR—for the vernacular through which they can express their discontent with current conditions. A young activist uses YouTube to speak back against J. K. Rowling in the voice of Cho Chang in order to challenge the superficial representation of Asian Americans in children’s literature. Murals in Los Angeles are employed to construct a mythic imagination of Chicano identity. Twitter users have turned to #BlackGirlMagic to highlight the black radical imagination and construct new visions of female empowerment. In each instance, activists demonstrate what happens when the creative energies of fans are infused with deep political commitment, mobilizing new visions of what a better democracy might look like.

Henry Jenkins

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