C3 takes both its name and impetus from the new book by CMS co-director Henry Jenkins. CONVERGENCE CULTURE: Where Old and New Media Collide maps new territory: where old and new media intersect, where grassroots and corporate media collide, where the power of the media producer and the power of the consumer interact in unpredictable ways.
Jenkins uncovers the important cultural transformations that are taking place as media such as these converge. He shows that convergence occurs on a top-down level as a result of media conglomeration (images flow across culture more rapidly if a small number of companies control interests in every media sector), and that it occurs on a bottom-up level as a result of digitization (consumers are taking media in their own hands and demanding that they be able to take it with them wherever they go) - Think of Napster as a struggle over unauthorized media convergence.
CONVERGENCE CULTURE explores the ways relations between media producers and consumers are changing. Right now, it is assumed that consumers will participate in the flow of media but there is wide disagreement about the terms of that participation. As a result of digital media, consumers are acting as communities - what Pierre Levy calls "collective intelligence" - rather than simply as individuals. In this way, media consumption becomes a profoundly social process.
Ultimately, Jenkins argues that the debate over convergence will redefine the face of American popular culture. Industry leaders see opportunities to direct content across many channels to increase revenue and broaden markets. At the same time, consumers envision a liberated public sphere, free of network controls, in a decentralized media environment. Sometimes corporate and grassroots efforts reinforce each other, creating closer, more rewarding relations between media producers and consumers. Sometimes these two forces are at war.
The changes mapped out in Convergence Culture, and the possible ways forward Jenkins proposes, provide the underpinning principles of the Convergence Culture Consortium.
Jenkins is an astute observer of media culture and his insights are spot-on... He intends his book to be a powerful tool both now and in the future... This is a book to be praised. It raises many issues. - LA Times
A remarkable book... Jenkins' insights are gripping and his prose is surprisingly entertaining and lucid for a book that is, at its core, intellectually rigorous... Jenkins' impressive ability to break down complex concepts into readable prose makes this study vital and engaging. - Publishers Weekly
CONVERGENCE CULTURE: Where Old and New Media Collide is available now through NYU Press.
YouTube is one of the most well-known and widely discussed sites of participatory media in the contemporary online environment, and it is the first genuinely mass-popular platform for user-created video. In this timely and comprehensive introduction to how YouTube is being used and why it matters, Burgess and Green discuss the ways that it relates to wider transformations in culture, society and the economy.
The book critically examines the public debates surrounding the site, demonstrating how it is central to struggles for authority and control in the new media environment. Drawing on a range of theoretical sources and empirical research, the authors discuss how YouTube is being used by the media industries, by audiences and amateur producers, and by particular communities of interest, and the ways in which these uses challenge existing ideas about cultural `production' and `consumption'.
Rich with both concrete examples and featuring specially commissioned chapters by Henry Jenkins and John Hartley, the book is essential reading for anyone interested in the contemporary and future implications of online media. It will be particularly valuable for students and scholars in media, communication and cultural studies.
Jean Burgess and Joshua Green insightfully weave together an engaging and much-needed cultural narrative of the astonishing new phenomenon that is YouTube with an incisive critique of its rapidly mythologized yet deeply uncertain transformative potential. - Sonia Livingstone, London School of Economics and Political Science
This book is an important and timely contribution to the literature on participatory culture and media. The analyses provide empirical bases for understanding the diversity of YouTube users' practices and sophisticated theoretical consideration of the social, cultural, political, historical, and economic contexts in which these practices are situated and which they so often disrupt. - Nancy Baym, University of Kansas
YouTube: Online Video and Participatory Culture is available now through Polity Press.
