Convergence Culture – The loss of unique character within ones culture? Or, the colliding of many to make one?

Media is constantly changing, whether it is through the technology being updated and modified, and software being enhanced etc. the list goes on, but primarily this shows us that as a whole, the old media of yesterday and the new media of today are colliding and in some ways combining.

Henry Jenkins stated “Convergence does not occur through media appliances, however sophisticated they become. Convergence occurs within the brains of individual consumers and through their social interactions with others.” (Jenkins, 3) Although this is not explaining exactly what Jenkins means by the term, I find it delves into the root of it and emphasizes a cultural shift for consumers and their demand for media content.

The relationship between producers and consumers of the media are constantly interlinking, and the influences they can provide each other overall provide our now media saturated world and the cultures within it with this media convergence making it a convergence culture.

The range of media delivery methods is enormous; however Jenkins within this book focuses more on trends in media rather than the hardware itself. The tendency of modern media creations being one trend, with the releasing of new and improved technology and software such as computer gaming and mobile phone apps etc. almost weekly gives a sense that the unique character of the old media which shaped a culture is being destroyed for the new media being created and introduced to consumers, as Jenkins mentioned the writer Brice Sterling stated, “the media that have died on the barbed wire fence of technological change”. (Jenkins, 13)

While the phenomenon of a single franchise, the ‘black box fallacy’ is another. With media content previously being circulated across different media systems, turning into one system, one black box in the living room that has it all, all of which is demanded by consumers, influenced by fan base and ultimately colliding from audience participation.

Overall t is us, the consumers of the media creating a convergence culture around us, expanding it and shaping it to the way our collective intelligence wants it to be.

Bibliography

Jenkin, H. (2008).s Convergence Culture. New York: New York, University Press.