Convergence Culture and Web 2.0
In Rhetorical Convergence: Studying Web Media, Anders Fagerjord tries to understand what convergence means and how it affects us. His most important contribution to the discussion of convergence, in my view, was his observation that in order “to undertake serious analysis of any medium text, a researcher must develop a strategy to find the cultural understanding of a medium’s relationship to the “real” (305). In other words, since images and text produce different kinds of significations for different peoples and serve different purposes in different cultural contexts, an understanding of convergences is tied to an understanding of conventions, genres, and interpretations in a context. So the study of rhetorical convergence is, in short, a measure of the effect/s of various Web-based elements coming together to create a particular way of thinking and feeling. And here we confront Jacob’s contention that Fagerjord did not define convergence in terms of how “the combination of ways and modes of thinking” are affected or change. I say Fagerjord did incorporate this point, but indirectly so.
Now on to Jenkins… In Blog This!, Jenkins suggests that bloggers are an upcoming force in national and international debates. The fact that he was criticized by bloggers for the publication of his article’s headline proves his point—that bloggers are out there, like a militia force, ready to respond to the world’s events. However, Jenkins posits the role of bloggers as separate from the role of the mass media and thinks of them as two distinct groups. He implies, therefore, that our freedom to see/read multiple opinions will depend on the co-existence of bloggers and the mass media. He states, “Ultimately, our media future could depend on the kind of uneasy truce that gets brokered between commercial media and these grass-roots intermediaries” (180). However, Jenkins (probably because of the time when this article was written) does not recognize that many of the most popular bloggers work for corporations, are sponsored by corporations, or get their news first from the corporate mass media. And this last point is perhaps the most troubling.
Bloggers are not, I am suggesting here, un-influenced by commercial mass media; so to what extent can the bloggers ensure us a future swimming with free and unique opinions? Of course, a freely chosen opinion about something does not come exclusively through isolation from the majority opinion, but it does rely on having a larger historical perspective and an ability to think through an issue logically; so bloggers themselves, by nature of being bloggers, are not any guarantee against a corporatizing of opinions, even though Jenkins seems to believe this is the case. Only bloggers who are able to step back from the opinions of others and THINK about the issues are any guarantee for a multiplicity of unique or reasoned viewpoints. But how many bloggers can do this when blogging is time dependent—must respond like minutemen—and produce blogs immediately? I’d say some can do it. But only some.
In Pop Cosmopolitanism, Jenkins states that “this essay represents a first stab at explaining how and why Asian popular culture is shaping American entertainment” (155). To initiate the discussion, Jenkins makes a distinction between corporate convergence and grassroots convergence, but he does not consider these two convergences in terms of their relative strengths. In my view, the distinction between the two has blurred because corporate convergence is stronger and it eats, like cookie monster, the good cookies (successful grassroots products). Corporate convergence has already proven itself to be stronger than grassroots convergence as it takes over bloggers and buys out popular channels of information. Corporate convergence has proven itself stronger through the observation that “global cosmopolitans” exist and desire to “escape the gravitational pull of their local communities in order to enter a broader sphere of cultural experience” (156), which is simply another way of saying that American teenagers are giving up on American corporate products, which have flooded the trends of their friends, in order to embrace Japanese corporations.
Jenkins is right to separate the movement toward media imperialism from the result of total cultural imperialism by asserting that “Pop cosmopolitanism cannot be reduced to… the ideological anxieties expressed in the concept of media imperialism (with its threat of cultural homogenization and of ‘the West suppressing the Rest’"(156). However, Jenkins conflates different aspects/levels of culture here, and, therefore, fails to realize that media imperialism brings about a more basic level of cultural homogenization that is beneath the surface-level issues concerning tastes and colors and types of products. In short, media imperialism does not require cultural homogenization on EVERY level in order to create a world that is generally dependent upon corporate products and on the same modes of thought. In being dependent on corporate products, all cultures that depend upon them come to believe in the attendant ideologies that an acceptance of such products requires. But to make the point: another way of putting this would be: Jenkins fails to see that media producers can now tailor their products to individual concerns and/or cultural tastes (the surface level concerns), but this does not mean that the products themselves do not carry messages or implications that assuage people to move in certain philosophical directions (the deeper level of assumptions about the way the world should work or works best). Jenkins states, “Most will negotiate with this imported culture in ways that reflect the local interests of media consumers rather than the global interests of media producers” (157). Yet, Jenkins speaks here as if culture is static, unaffected by those products that come in, as if a person’s culture does not change by interacting with those products. The two are not so separate. And in an age where media producers can tailor products to the desires of a culture, the dependence on the mass-produced product itself carries with it an essential shift in the culture—whether that shift that I am positing results in an over-turning of the culture or a corruption or a betterment of the culture is dependent on one’s culture and one’s point of view.
In Interactive Audiences, Jenkins makes a similar move. Discussing fans and fan groups, he praises Pierre Levy and argues that the internet “deterritorializes” knowledge and allows for less cultural dominance as fans re-contextualize information and share different interpretations and various points of view. But Jenkins ignores the fact that all the fans are talking about the same product, which was produced, ironically enough, by corporate elites. Jenkins states, “Levy contrasts his ideal of ‘collective intelligence’ with the dystopian image of the ‘hive mind,’ where individual voices are suppressed. Far from demanding conformity, the new knowledge culture is enlivened by multiple ways of knowing” (140). HA! My question for Jenkins is: if we’re all talking about LOST and our own interpretations of LOST from different points of view, have we really “deterritorialized” knowledge and are we really not experiencing domination of thought and culture?
So when Jenkins correctly states that “room for participation and improvisation are being built into new media franchises” (145), what he is suggesting, it seems, is that audiences are controlling/leading the media conglomerates. But, in my view, the opposite is true. Media conglomerates are now offering fans the illusion of engaging in the meaning production process while ultimately remaining in control of the product, so the audience, by participating, is not leading the product, but they are being led into fan rituals that require more of the audience member’s life—a total-life domination by the product—To participate in the TV show LOST, for example, one might now have to go online and complete a puzzle or submit a video or seek out certain clues in a book (at every step, the fan encounters products).
Finally, regarding Hardey’s article The city in the age of web 2.0: Hardey asserts that social networking sites and digital information about the city will mark “the emergence of new ways of experiencing and living in the city as people make nuanced choices about places to avoid, visit, live or work.” And this already happens to an extent, as demonstrated by Hardey's discussion of London blogs on page 7. However, since web audiences self-select websites, the experience of the city is highly individualized and it is, therefore, possible that people will simply understand/map the city through the opinions and experiences of those who agree with them—so any individual's experience of the cityscape will not change very much since he/she already live this way now. Of course, media conglomerates are seeking out and consolidating the websites that provide this city-based info on restaurants, museums, etc, but people will still likely seek out those websites that seem to agree with their tastes and view of the world-- so how exactly does this technology change the choices of where people will “visit, live or work”?