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Impact of media convergence
Media convergence and its effects
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Recommended: Impact of media convergence
Ray Taylor
English 231
Dr. Jennifer Boyle
11 December 2014
Convergence Culture and How Harry Potter Changed the World
We live in a society where convergence is the new fad. Everywhere we look, media is converging with other types of media and becoming something new and wonderful. Henry Jenkins, an American media scholar and author of Convergence Culture, states, “We are entering an era where media will be everywhere, and we will use all kinds of media in relation to one another...” (2001). This statement really allowed me a better understanding of what convergence culture is and what we, as a society, do to converge something. This, in turn, lead me to think of what a good example would be that is very relatable and known to our current generation,
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And from all of these, convergence is definitely involved. The three main points of convergence culture are media convergence, participatory culture, and collective intelligence, which all relate back to the Wizarding World in some way, shape, or form.
The Harry Potter series is a force to be reckoned with now-a-days. Even though the book series ended, as well as the movies, it will always continue to leave impacts and grow on top of itself using different media, old and new. When J.K. Rowling wrote the first book, she never thought it would be what it has become today. A New York Times article states, “Here we look at what has become a hugely profitable corporate brand, a fan-fueled sensation and one of the biggest entertainment stories of the last decade” (Dargis and Scott, 2011). A lot of this hype and growth came from the use of media convergence. The definition of media convergence is the combination of new media and old media within a single piece of media work – the coming together of different media products. A good example of this would be how we now use our cellular devices to listen to music. We use the old media idea of personal music players, but we
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Obviously, the Harry Potter fandom has had this happen in the years it has been extremely popular. In this case, it has spread across the whole globe in many different ways and gives everyone who is a fan a sense of collectivism and connection. The books have sold between 400 and 450 million copies, making them one of the best-selling book series in history, and had been translated into 73 languages. The movies were a world-wide phenomenon and there is even an international park in Japan. On page 40 of his article, Jenkins talks about how Harry Potter was attacked by many people and organizations to be banned due to its paganism content, but “the publish industry joined forces with librarians, teachers, and civil libertarians to stave off these attacks on children’s rights to read” (Jenkins, 40). Fans of this franchise have even started a national charity called the Harry Potter Alliance, which supports literacy throughout the nation, and have even recruited Evanna Lynch, who played Luna Lovegood in the Harry Potter movies, to help with their cause. These two examples perfectly portray collective intelligence because they include group of people collaboratively working together in a completion against per say the attackers of this book series or illiteracy in America
The Harry Potter series, written by J. K. Rowling, is about a young boy who finds out he is a wizard and uses his magic powers to vanquish evil. The series is currently the target of many protestors, as they scrutinize and penalize the books for their creative and imaginative topics. Ranging from education to religion, protestors' reasoning's behind theses attacks have sparked nationwide debates. Everything from censorship to book burning, protesting and pulling theses books from school shelves, have been done to outlaw the Potter series. Elizabeth D. Schafer, author of "Harry and History", summarizes how these controversies stem forth and how she disagrees with the protests against the Potter series. Censorship of the Harry Potter books is a vain attempt to maintain control and power over citizens as their rights and freedom of choice is being severely violated by forbidding the viewing of certain sources of entertainment.
Adventures abound as Harry begins his new life learning to be a wizard. The Harry Potter books, four of which have been published, with another three planned, are so hugely popular that the New York Times Book Review was forced to revise their best-seller list in order to appease publishers and authors of adult material. Because the first Harry book dominated the best-seller list since its inception in 1998, children's books must now appear only on t...
...ave evolved about the subject matter of these books. The greatest controversy, though, centers on the series’ religious references, which have caused many parents to despise the “immoral” concepts of the stories and forbid their children from reading these books. Such people feel that Rowling promotes paganism through the magic performed by the characters, and promotes evil through various connections to Satan. Still, Harry Potter does not reflect the practices of Wicca and good always overpowers evil in the end; therefore, we should not be concerned with the effects of the series on children, or even adults. After all, readers have been enjoying stories containing magical references for centuries and humanity has not suffered because of it. Harry Potter is just another magical story and should be enjoyed, rather than judged because of its controversial references.
Joseph STRAUBHAAR and Robert LaROSE (2001). Media Now. Communications Media in the Information Age. 3rd Edition. Belmont, Wadsworth/Thompson Learning.
“American Media History is the story of a nation. It is the story of events in the long battle to disseminate information, entertainment, and opinion in society. It is the story of the men and women whose inventions, ideas, and struggles helped shape the nation and its media system.”(Fellow) The evolution of media has influenced countless societal and cultural changes leading to the present day. But it didn’t get this far over night. It is estimated to have begun more than 30,000 years ago through the process of cave painting. (Crewe) Following cave painting, came the invention of books being printed on blocks “The Diamond Sutra”, the Gutenberg printing press, newspapers in 1640, photographs, the radio in 1894, television, and recently computers; which lead all the way to modern day social media. Through the hard work of multiple inventors the media was able to reach where it is today. It has changed the way people communicate with each other, mostly for the better.“ The way people experience the meaning, how they perceive the world and communicate with each other, and how they distinguish the past and identify the future.” (Gitelman) Or as we know it as: a new way of communicating information from person to person.
In recent history a cultural phenomenon has occurred. With the rise of Harry Potter, this nation's youth have displayed a “mania” that has not been seen in reference to books for a long time. For example, Barns & Noble America's largest bookseller has recently declared that Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix will be their “largest seller in the history of the entire company” (Mangan). In light of this rise to fame one should note that Harry Potter can and will impact modern culture.
Croteau, D., Hoynes, W., & Milan, S. (2012). Media/society (4th ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Bertolt Brecht asserted, “Art is not a mirror held up to reality, but a hammer with which to shape it.” Art, encompassing all popular culture artifacts, both reflects the society that creates it and is itself an agent capable of changing social reality. Popular culture artifacts, like the Harry Potter series discussed in Nexon and Neumann’s work, Harry Potter and International Relations, exert agency, or causal power over the meaning and interpretation of cultural elements, by influencing the way ideas and values are constructed in everyday life. This paper will demonstrate that popular culture artifacts construct meanings and influence interpretations of reality.
Link to lecture and chapter: This chapter is making link with societies. Mass media make changes, marked movement from writing to print. New media creating a lot of changes but other side this can be harmful.
The Mass Media is a unique feature of modern society; its development has accompanied an increase in the magnitude and complexity of societal actions and engagements, rapid social change, technological innovation, rising personal income and standard of living and the decline of some traditional forms of control and authority.
...ely available and accessible from everywhere. New media has introduced innovative platforms and ways to consume media products, they have been embedded into our social context that we are unaware of the different ways we are constantly relying on technology. This leads us to call for more contemporary studies towards new media audiences for a more in-depth analysis and how they have merged the different contexts of media consumption.
In fact, most media content are no longer merely artistic and informational – they are meant to engage the masses thus to exert profound influence not only on individual development but also on social advancement. No one can deny that in the contemporary world, media, composed of dynamic and various platforms, is widely perceived to be the predominant means of communication. Noticeably, the term media is first used with the advent of newspaper and magazines; yet with the passage of time, the term is broadened by the inventions of radio, television, video and internet, which are all adapted as forms of media that bring the world closer to us. Indeed, media depends on its wild audience coverage, active public engagement and open, two-way communication to create a highly interactive platform through which “humanity, fully connected, collaboratively build and share a global world”(McLuhan 160).Without doubt, media presents a strong impact upon individual and society in the proc...
The first Harry Potter book came out in 1997, and no one at the time could imagine that in the 10 years that followed, it would become the most read children’s book and a $6.4 billion worth film franchise. The aim of this essay is to try to explain the reason for the popularity of the Harry Potter books. The aim is also to show the changes that the series caused, how they influenced the people who read them, how they had an impact on literacy and overall, on British popular culture. In the first part of the essay I will briefly explain the beginning of the Harry Potter phenomenon and its growing popularity in the countries all over the world. In the second part I will deal with the character of Harry, explaining why he has such an appeal to the readers and how come people identify with him. In the third part, I will explain the impact Harry Potter books have on society, how they influence young adults and children. The fourth part will deal with the controversies about Harry Potter, the views and thoughts of religious people who see Harry Potter as a book that should be banned. In the fifth part, I will mention the difference the phenomenon caused when it comes to the book business and the film industry of Britain.
Media is one of the most powerful tools that a communicator can have. Media can build up empires and also tear them down. It has proven to society time and time again that its power is untamable, as well as unpredictable. It shapes who we are personally and it shapes everyone around us. In order for one to truly understand the concept of media integrated into our culture, we have to first discern what media is, the elements inside of media, and finally how media connects to us and our culture as well as how it shapes it and our responsibility in utilizing this power.
The culture of my interest is the Western varies from another, even if they are geographical neighbors or share in common certain cultural characteristics as aforementioned. For instance, if one were to live in the US and visit Mexico, one may notice that people are much closer physically culture referred to sometimes as Western civilization, Western lifestyle or European civilization. This includes a heritage of social norms, ethical values, traditional customs, belief systems, political systems, and specific artifacts and technologies that have some origin or are associated with Europe. (LiveScience, 2012) The western culture features a world of technologies and rational thinking. It is diverse; people enjoy many freedoms in terms of religion, philosophy, and settlement. (LiveScience, 2012). Western culture is a body of knowledge gotten from reason. This emergence of reason has made possible a broad accumulation of understanding related to reality, including human nature. This understanding is shown in many vital ideologies and values, which includes happiness, individualism, science and technology. (LiveScience,2012)