Convergence Culture

Convergence culture is said to be place where new and old media collide to create a new culture.  This was popularized by Henry Jenkins, a Provost’s Professor of Communication, Journalism, and Cinematic Arts at the University of Southern California.  He wrote a book called Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide.  In the book, he talks about three different concepts that connect to convergence: media convergence, participatory culture, and collective intelligence.  

Media convergence is the combination of new and old media within a single piece of work.  In today’s age, technology is as advanced as ever.  We are all surrounded by so many forms of media convergence.  An example of this could be using a cell phone to listen to music instead of a device specifically made for music.  Participatory culture is a culture in which members believe their contributions matter and feel some degree of connection with one another.  For example, reality tv shows such as American Idol and XFactor use voting systems to encourage audience participation.  Collective intelligence is intelligence that is shared through people collaborating with each other.  An example of this would be a group project used for class or a team creating a video game.  There needs to be sharing of intelligence for these examples to work well.

Jenkins wrote, “Right now, convergence culture is getting defined top-down by decisions being made in corporate boardrooms and bottom-up by decisions made in teenagers’ bedrooms.”  This culture is driven by higher ups wanting to expand to the consumers while the consumers want to have media readily accessible to them.  Media is going to expand across different technology, and technology will be adapted to fit that media expansion.  As technology grows, media will grow proportionally alongside it.  Convergence culture will just keep expanding as our age grows older and the new generation grows into it.