Second Tut Reflections (March 9)

Today we mainly looked at and discussed in class the topics of participatory culture and convergence.

To begin we watched this;

In this Jeff Greenfield is explaining how far the world of media has come due to the wonders of the internet and little devices!

He seems to really want to tell you how AMAZING it all is so he emphasises almost every 3rd or 4th word.

I find it interesting when Jeff begins to talk about convergence. The way he says every type of media comes to us on the same device completely contradicts the text we read during and after our first tut (Henry Jenkins Convergence Culture, Introduction).

"Much contemporary discourse about convergence starts and ends with what I call the Black Box Fallacy. Sooner or later, the argument goes, all media content is going to flow through a single black box into our living rooms... I don't know about you, but in my living room, I am seeing more and more black boxes.... there will be no single black box that controls the flow of media into our homes."

I completely agree with Henry Jenkins in this argument.

Jeff suggests that we don't have to use anything but an iPhone to get our media these days which I believe is completely untrue.

Whilst it is true that the iPhone can basically do anything most of our older media technologies could it is certainly not a convenient way to do them and could never be the single supreme device (I scoffed when he said it's a movie theatre and a TV. It isn't).

Jenkins point is one I am sure many people can relate to, the number of different media technologies they must learn to use and swap when they want use different media types clearly demonstrates as far as technology goes we have not reached a point where a single device can do everything comfortably.

He says "there will be no single black box" and I believe that there never will due to the competing media and technology companies, their different business goals and the different needs of the various consumers.

We were then asked the two terms, heres the little I wrote;

Participatory Culture: Media companies allowing to actively comment on, contribute and shape content within the media.

Convergence: Everything coming together as one.

On reflection and further research, whilst the definition of participatory culture isn't wrong I should have included that everyday people can bring content and ideas to the world (over the net) that they previously would not have been able to do.

This is what the class as a whole defined the terms as;

Participatory Culture:

• Audience participation in media
• Circulation of media texts
• Allowing consumers to contribute to content creation across media platforms

Convergence:

• Cultural shift
• An ongoing process
• Simplification by bringing media together
• Lines between different platforms are blurred
• Constant adoption to new media and increasing consumer power

Finally we watched this;