ARG Design
Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide
Henry Jenkins 2006 11 references
Henry Jenkins's convergence culture framework for understanding how old and new media collide, how participatory culture reshapes audience-producer dynamics, and how collective intelligence transforms entertainment, marketing, education, and politics.
media-convergence participatory-culture transmedia-storytelling collective-intelligence fan-culture media-literacy cultural-theory
Overview
The Core Framework
- Convergence is cultural, not technological — it happens in consumers' brains and social interactions, not in a "black box" device
- Three pillars: media convergence (content flows across platforms), participatory culture (audiences actively create and circulate content), collective intelligence (distributed knowledge pooled voluntarily becomes a new power source)
- The negotiation: convergence culture exists at the collision point of corporate (top-down) and grassroots (bottom-up) media forces
- Participation ≠ interactivity: interactivity is pre-structured by designers; participation is open-ended and culturally shaped
- Critical utopianism: identify democratic possibilities in convergence while honestly confronting obstacles
Quick Lookup
| Situation | Do This | Avoid This |
|---|---|---|
| Designing media strategy | Build transmedia worlds with additive comprehension | Create redundant adaptations across platforms |
| Managing fan communities | Adopt collaborationist stance; fans are allies | Prohibitionist crackdowns that alienate your base |
| Measuring audience engagement | Track expressions (active participation) | Rely solely on impressions (passive eyeballs) |
| Building brand loyalty | Court emotional investment ethically | Exploit lovemarks without accountability |
| Teaching media literacy | Create affinity spaces for peer learning | Restrict to passive consumption/analysis |
| Political communication | Blend grassroots and broadcast channels | Rely on either alone (Black Box Fallacy) |
The Key Insight
"Convergence does not occur through media appliances, however sophisticated they may become. Convergence occurs within the brains of individual consumers and through their social interactions with others." — Henry Jenkins
References
No references match your search.