In “Worship At The Altar of Convergence”, Henry Jenkins discusses the concept of convergence, where both old and new media collide. Jenkins describes convergence as the flow of content between multiple media platforms, industries, and the migratory behaviour that is present throughout the media audience (2). He explains that convergence is a necessity because it describes technological, industrial, cultural and social changes that are present in our technological society. That being said, Jenkins analyzes the relation between media convergence, participatory culture, and collective intelligence.
Jenkins argues that American popular culture will be redefined by the struggles over convergence and media. With the idea of profit in mind, corporate leaders create mass amounts of opportunities that will attract the consumer’s attention, which will increase the amount of profit by expanding their market. By expanding their market, they are able to sell every brand by marketing consumers via multiple platforms. Jenkins explains how the audience’s active participation is key to the circulation of all present media content, creating a cultural shift.
Jenkins states that “convergence occurs within the brains of individual consumers and through their social interactions with others” (3). We live in a convergence culture, where old and new media platforms come together to create new things that are in demand by consumers. Jenkins explains that consumers now have the ability and power to be able to actively participate in the consumer process. Sites such as YouTube, allows users to actively display their own video productions, displaying their own execution of mass media products.
We live in a convergence culture, where technology is conti...
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...e Black Box Fallacy”, where media combine as one making them more convenient.
With technology advancing, people are now able to watch movies and shows on their phones, with programs such as Netflix and people are able to torrent movies that are still playing in theatre. Before, people would have to go to Blockbusters or Rogers in order to rent movies and games, however, the advancement of technology and the creation of programs such as Netflix, has dominated and therefore closed many video stores across Canada. With media becoming one and easily accessible online, experiences are being lost due to online convenience. I agree with Jenkins explanation on the relationship between media convergence, participatory culture and collective intelligence. Where technology, media, convergence, culture and copyright, are shaping our social and cultural practices drastically.
Television has always been an industry whose profit has always been gained through ads. But in chapter 2 of Jason Mittell’s book, Television and American Culture, Mittell argues that the rise of the profit-driven advertising television model can be traced back through American television history, and that the rise of the profit-driven advertising model of television actually helped to mold American culture both from a historical standpoint and from a social standpoint.
Neil Postman is deeply worried about what technology can do to a culture or, more importantly, what technology can undo in a culture. In the case of television, Postman believes that, by happily surrendering ourselves to it, Americans are losing the ability to conduct and participate in meaningful, rational public discourse and public affairs. Or, to put it another way, TV is undoing public discourse and, as the title of his book Amusing Ourselves to Death suggests, we are willing accomplices.
The media has been a part of the daily life of the American people for the longest time, because of this fact, the media influences the decisions and views of how people should live. One big part of the media that tends to start to develop a sense of how the day-to-day American should live is Disney. Since kids are the main source of Disney’s billion dollar industry children have become an important dimension of the social theory (Giroux 1999: 65). “Within this context, television emerges as a consumer-oriented medium that reflects advertisers’ desire to reach a young, upscale, and primarily White audience” (Goodale1999; Henderson and Baldasty 2003: 100). As a result other races and ethnic groups other than white Americans are often put aside when it comes to the social media view of how Americans should live.
In assessing the impact and effect of popular cultural forms like MTV, it is important to acknowledge the extent to which, rather than having them imposed upon us, we may instead appropriate or assimilate parts, whilst choosing to reject or ignore the rest. This, of course, has the consumer or viewer acting (or perhaps more accurately interacting) as opposed to simply passively receiving (Philo par 16).Even though critics of MTV stand strongly against the passive consumer, th...
The issue of the relationship between the mass media and the popular culture has always been a controversial issue in social sciences. The political economists insist on the role of the media industry in the creation of this phenomenon of the twentieth century. Though, advocates such as John Fiske, argue that popular culture is actually the creation of the populous itself, and is independent of the capitalist production process of the communication sector. Basing his argument on the immense interpretive power of the people, Fiske believes that the audience is able to break all the indented meanings within a media message. He also believes- by giving new meanings to that specific message they can oppose the power block that is trying to impose its ideology to the public. Consequently, this anarchistic activity of the audience creates the popular culture as a defence mechanism. Even when we accept Fiske’s ideas, we can not disregard the manipulative power of the media and its effects on cultural and social life.
The article Hop on Pop (2002) explains how culture is influenced especially by the tactics of mass media and popular culture. This aspect is one that Walt Disney and his company used and did so very well. This article opened me up to think about how the media is trying to influence
Pop culture in the 1950s and 1960s began to spread and infest the nation from front to back through radio shows, books and magazines, television programs, and even motion pictures. Whether it is culture in terms of political affairs, clothing or the latest musical sensations, the United States has always played the dominant role when it came to who knows what is best, first. Some cases of Americanizati...
Dominick, J. (2009). The Dynamics of Mass Communication: Media in the Digital Age. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill Higher Education
Everywhere we look we see advertisements, commercials, news reports, who seem to influence our daily lives. Media we would not normally think of can also affect us. For example, the mere mention of Red Lobster in Beyoncé’s song “Formation” boosted their overall sales while the song was on the charts. Chapter one of the Dines and Humez text covered perception of the audience, study of culture and media, and how the media is “multiperspectival” (Dines and Humez).
The Control of the media by industries stimulates a certain consumption, to seize not only the spirit, but also the spectators, creating new consumers subject goods.
Marshall McLuhan and Raymond Williams, both cornerstones in their respected media theory and cultural studies, differed in their opinions of the relationship between media technology and social change. McLuhan believed in technological determinism, which is “an approach that identifies technology, or technological developments, as the central causal element in processes of change” (Croteau, Hoynes, and Milan 290). In other words, McLuhan believes that new technology drives the way cultural values and social structures develop. He was interested in the cultural effects produced by electronic media; he was especially interested in the effects of televisions. McLuhan’s The Medium is the Massage argued that technology has changed the way humans do things and interact, that “all media are extensions of some human faculty” (McLuhan 5).
Popular culture is often referred to as being produced by the mass media ‘for’ the public, who are seen as consumers. An example of this would be the television programme ‘The X Factor’. The X Factor is produced by a large television company which is owned by a multi millionaire music mogul. The programme is shown extensively throughout the winter months, when people favour staying indoors to going outside. The concept of the show is that it entices people in during the first couple of week. This is done by showing the contestants’ auditions. The reason for t...
America has become the epitome of the free enterprise ideal. Mass production, mass media, mass promotion. Efficiency and economic choices have become so central to American culture that the very fabric of who we are is determined by it. This difference in culture from the rest of the world is readily visible in the way in which American corporations do business: with a focus on efficiency and quantity as opposed to refinement and quality. Advertising, the mass promotion of mass produced products, has become the primary mode of communication and education in today's world. The result of a continued drive, at every level, for more material wealth, mass promotion has evolved into an art that invades every sector of American life and affects the way in which television and print media, as well as film and politics are run. These structures help to shape the way in which we all live our lives, and to shape the way in which American culture has and will evolve.
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.
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.