Examples Of Convergence Culture

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,

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

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