Henry Jenkins. Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide. New York: New York University Press, 2006.

On a daily basis, newspapers, TV items and online discussions are heralding the dawn of a new media era. The cultural landscape is being reshaped by new technologies, which are faster, more compact and better connected than ever before. In turn, consumers of media content are more demanding about when, where, how and what they consume.

These changes affect not just the ‘heritage’ media of film and television, but also continue to reshape the way we engage with games and multimedia. How, then, should media producers begin to grapple with this altered landscape? How can the industry adjust itself to meet the challenges of the future?

Some of these questions are already being answered, as producers and distributors rapidly deploy new methods and products to meet audience demand. Yet it is also worthwhile to step back and take an overview of this new cultural landscape.

Henry Jenkins, a leading cultural studies academic at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, offers a helpful way of doing just that. As a pioneer of ‘fan studies’, Jenkins has a unique perspective on the newly empowered consumers of contemporary culture. In short, Jenkins characterises this culture as a convergence culture.

Here, I’d like to summarise some of the most important points raised by Jenkins in his book Convergence Culture, and then conclude with some thoughts about how these ideas relate to independent media producers in general, and Australian producers in particular.

Old media, new media, convergence culture

For Jenkins, ‘convergence’ refers to a series of interrelated changes: the conglomeration of media companies, the increasing flows of media content across different platforms, and the increasing movement of audiences across those platforms in search of content.

Importantly, Jenkins argues that convergence is not simply about technology. Rather, convergence is a cultural and social shift – in other words, it’s about how people (producers and consumers) make use of technology to suit their own needs and wants, and the way that technologies are developed around these uses.

Here, Jenkins counteracts two prevailing myths about convergence. The first of these he dubs the ‘Black Box Fallacy‘ – the idea that all media will converge in a single appliance that sits in our living room (or travels in our pocket or handbag). Instead, Jenkins points to the ongoing proliferation of old and new devices, and suggests that we will continue to see this proliferation.

The second myth is that of the digital revolution – the idea, prevalent in the 1990s, that new media would wipe out the old, replacing mass media with personalised content. While old delivery systems may die, Jenkins argues, media forms persist. The novel and theatre were not wiped out by cinema. Similarly, cinema and television will continue to coexist with the internet, although their roles and status may change.

Furthermore, in contrast to the private and personalised media consumption imagined in the ‘digital revolution’ model, the new culture of convergence is a networked culture. It connects producers and consumers in increasingly complex ways, and allows audiences to interact directly with media products and with each other.

Collective intelligence and participatory culture

By emphasising culture over technology, Jenkins is able to account for the dynamics of media audiences in the online era. According to Jenkins, these dynamics can be described in terms of collective intelligence. Drawing upon Pierre Levy’s definitions, Jenkins distinguishes between shared knowledge (knowledge that is established and agreed upon within a group) and collective intelligence (the sum of knowledge that is held by individual members of a group). In the realm of collective knowledge, ‘no-one knows everything, everyone knows something, all knowledge resides in humanity’.

Collective knowledge can power industrial or scientific innovation. It also, argues Jenkins, drives audience relations with media content. Examples include the fan communities that form around TV shows, films and games. These communities may share plot details, or tips on completing game missions, or they may be even more active. They may generate new stories based around existing fictional characters, produce fan videos, or lobby producers to change the content of a show or game. Whereas these activities were once restricted to peripheral fan communities, they have now, to a large extent, entered the mainstream.

Media producers and distributors, argues Jenkins, must acknowledge these new dynamics or risk alienating audiences. Using Star Wars as an example, Jenkins shows how different branches of the same company have projected contradictory messages towards consumers about their participation. On the one hand, fans have been encouraged to collaborate on online game development and produce fan videos; on the other, Lucasfilm has, at various times, tried to restrict or shut down fan fiction, or even to assert copyright ownership over it.

Jenkins suggests that media companies will increasingly need to favour a collaborationist approach over a prohibitionist one if they want to retain fan loyalty. Encouraging and working with this type of collective intelligence, he argues, will benefit producers as well as consumers. Here, he draws upon Levy’s argument that knowledge culture drives the commodity system. The dynamic nature of online communities, for example, offers new opportunities for producers to develop business models that take advantage of ‘viral marketing’ and the collective efforts of consumers.

Affective economics

The challenge facing media companies is increasingly one of audience retention (as opposed to audience attraction). As the marketplace for media products becomes increasingly fragmented, media companies want to encourage extended, long-term relationships between consumers and content.

TV industry studies have identified three types of viewers: zappers, casuals and loyals. Yet, as Jenkins points out, in practice we are a combination of all three types, and we may behave differently in response to different types of content. Furthermore, while industry analysis has tended to exaggerate the dominance of ‘zappers’, recent studies show that ‘loyals’ are more likely to pay attention and respond positively to advertising content.

Attracting these loyals demands a shift in emphasis: from quantity (measured in terms of ratings) to quality (measured in terms of the ongoing value of a show or franchise to consumers). This shift has not escaped the attention of the media business. Already, suggests Jenkins, a new strain of marketing theory is taking root within the industry. This emergent theory, which he dubs affective economics, strives towards a deeper understanding of how consumers’ emotions drive their media viewing and buying choices.

The changing emotional dynamics of convergence culture dictate a rethinking of the products offered to consumers. In the case of big-budget franchises such as The Matrix, this has involved creating an entire world based upon the franchise, in which different experiences and story-elements can be delivered across a range of platforms. Crucially, each piece of the Matrix mediascape offers users a different experience – they can extend and deepen their relationship to the franchise by seeking out these new experiences, or sample only a few of them.

Similarly, American Idol is carefully structured to appeal to every type of viewer – from the jaded, disinterested zapper to the deeply involved loyal, who can follow the trials of the contestants across TV, the internet and mobile media. Each additional piece of these media puzzles offers users another opportunity to connect with other users and exercise their collective intelligence.

Crucially, suggests Jenkins, industry figures may still be too attached to an understanding of audiences as made up of separate individuals. By overlooking the community aspect of entertainment consumption, companies may be missing one of the most important features of convergence culture.

Further thoughts

Jenkins’s argument is not without its limitations. At times, despite the fact that he is careful to qualify his claims, he seems to overemphasise the significance of fans as a proportion of the total audience. After all, many consumers still happily consume media in a more ‘passive’ manner; many, for that matter, may not crave a more ‘participatory’ experience. Nonetheless, he is certainly right to suggest that this type of participation has increased in popularity, and that media companies are being forced to take notice.

Secondly, Jenkins downplays the idea of individualised, personalised media, even as he draws upon Chris Anderson’s notion of the Long Tail, which describes the newly viable market in niche tastes opened up by the likes of Amazon.com. The long tail describes a situation in which each consumer can pursue his or her individual tastes with greater ease than ever before. In addition, new devices such as the iPod make it even more possible to cocoon yourself, to be alone with your tastes – as the name of the device suggests. Thus, just as new technologies and business models allow us to share our tastes across devices and platforms, they may also facilitate divergence.

Thirdly, Jenkins’s argument finds most traction when he is looking at the top and the bottom of the media pyramid – the big budget franchises on the one hand, and on the other, the fan communities and amateur producers that engage with them. What is less clear is how these ideas might apply to the middle ground – the independent media production sector. How do these ideas apply, for example, in the context of Australian media production?

The Australian context

In a recent talk at the AFTRS Centre for Screen Business, Dr John Banks of the Queensland University of Technology outlined the audience development strategies pursued by Auran Games, an Australian company developing Fury, an online multiplayer game.

Auran shows an acute awareness of the issues raised in Jenkins’ book: the need to build a compelling extended world for users, the need to offer ancillary support and/or experiences, and the need to engage directly with users and solicit feedback. By tapping into the collective intelligence of the gaming community, Auran has illustrated that Australian companies can take advantage of the new culture of convergence.

For producers and distributors in traditional media industries, this type of engagement may be less straightforward. The feedback loops that facilitate game development may not work for feature films (witness Snakes on a Plane as an example of this). At the very least, however, Australian media producers and distributors should take into account the changing cultural conditions in which their products seek an audience.

This may mean developing a new openness towards consumer participation, and a deeper understanding of the emotional dynamics of convergence culture. It may even mean giving consumers the opportunity to co-create media content, or helping them to create communities around existing content.

These ideas are already infiltrating the industry, but it is worth framing them more directly. In turn, further questions emerge. What types of participatory culture are already developing amongst local audiences focused on local content? What media forms lend themselves to this type of culture? To what extent does screen-based content need to be internationally focused in order to generate such an audience?

Jenkins’s book is not the last word on the matter, but it does give us helpful ways to think about where relationships among producers, consumers and media are going. The film and television industries, in particular, may benefit from a new perspective. In addition, the notion of convergence culture should lead into other debates about copyright, about technological change, and about the future of the various media forms.

For more on convergence culture, see the MIT Convergence Culture Consortium and Henry Jenkins’s blog.