Henry Jenkins. (Media theorist)

Henry Jenkins.

• American media scholar
• Convergence Culture - Different types of media converging together.
• Jenkins is interested in media, the online world, or media 2.0. (web 2.0, current state of online world/technology as it compares to the early days of the web e.g 90s)
• Jenkins makes the argument that convergence is less about a technological process and more about a cultural shift as consumers are encouraged to seek out new information and make connections amongst dispersed media content.‘ <---- He makes a positive statement about media, whereas the Hypodermic Needle Syringe is pessimistic about media.
• Media Audience Theory; - Media Convergence, -Participatory Cultures, -Collective Intelligence

Participatory Cultures - (1) A change whereby rather than media producers and consumers occupying separate roles, they now interact with each other ‘according to a new set of rules,’ which nobody as yet fully understands. • Some consumers have a greater ability to ‘participate’ in this emerging culture than others. (2) Participatory culture is an opposing concept to consumer culture — in other words a culture in which private individuals (the public) do not act as consumers only, but also as contributors or producers


Collective Intelligence - Media causes a buzz in consumer communities which are of increasing value to media producers. • Subsequently, consumption has become a collective process by which we pool our resources and combine our skills.

Jenkins belongs to a group of Media thinkers who are highly optimistic about the Media.  They view the Media, and Web 2.0 as empowering to the audience, breaking down traditional boundaries of class and status. The audience is interactive and powerful.  They can participate and create their own narratives, questioning messages and generating their own ideas.

Jenkins, Shirky and others clearly contrast with the more traditional media effects theory models, which see the media as powerful and the audience as passive.

Fandom - Basically a group of people dedicated to a specific thing in the media, e.g a film, an artist, etc

How might gamers be textual poachers? - basically how can gamers be active

Through this "poaching", the fans carried out such creative cultural activities as rethinking personal identity issues such as gender and sexuality; writing stories to shift focus onto a media "storyworld's" secondary characters; producing content to expand of the timelines of a storyworld; or filling in missing scenes in the storyworld's official narratives order to better satisfy the fan community.

Gamers can interact by creating their own characters and customizing them, they can also choose what story they want to play, for example, in Minecraft. They can also interact by talking through their headpiece set. Gamers can also create mods or download mods into their game.

HOMEWORK DUE 12TH MARCH - 500 WORDS; DEFINE JENKINS THEORY OF FANDOM, HOW DO CONVERGING PLATFORMS AND NEW DISTRIBUTION METHODS HELP MINECRAFT FANS BECOME TEXTUAL POACHERS?

• definition and dates for jerkins' theory
• converging platforms - minecraft cross-platform gaming, can be accessed on a range of platforms and devices
• Distribution - how the audience gets the game e.g pay for it? a free copy? are there mods? < participatory culture
• media 2.0
• synergy: allows for convergence
• e.gs of textual poachers