Before I read this essay, I have never encountered the concept of “convergence culture” in English. It is such a foreign term for me that a research must be done for understanding of the text. The picture above is a piece of excerpt from this book. This term is first brought up in Henry Jenkins’ book, Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide, in which he uncovers “the digital renaissance” undertaking now by the media industry and its audiences. “Towards a participatory culture” or the convergence culture is the word used to describe the cultural shift, according to Jenkins, resulting from the following three influential trends: new media technologies, promotion of DIY media productions, and the economic favouring of mediums flow across various platforms.
Here is another piece of information I found online, which is a powerpoint briefly but quite clearly explains the “convergence” that Jenkins refers to.
Usually, works on media are outdated as soon as they are published because the subject that they are dealing with is so dynamic, but the “renaissance” Jenkins is talking about is an in-depth insight to the current media landscape. His insight enlightens me that I actually may have personally experienced a part of this changing age and am doing it also at this very moment. Jenkins has discussed the convergence under the context of an American society, yet my experience in China has almost been the same. It was in the year of 2004 when our family still gathered together in the living room during the news time in the evening only for listening to the voice of the institutional authority, of the government. It was still the era of “Windows 2000” or “Windows 98” for computers. Acquiring information has been inconvenient through media platforms like newspaper, radios, television and seldom from the web. We were like the monkeys in the lab who can only obtain food from one or two sources that were provided by “institutions”. As I grew up, my feeling in China is that dating from the year of 2007 when the first model of iphone was released, the spread of information has been truly redefined. From the simple Nokia to touchscreen iphones, it took only one year to change the world. From QQ to Weibo, to Wechat, I’ve lived through the great changes. Nowadays, everyone can be the source of information, start up a channel and broadcast. The shift is simply stunning.
Now since we are heading towards a participatory culture, it means that anyone can be one sector of the information web, but what problems are we facing now? Jenkins identified that “the key struggles over the next few decades would be over ‘the terms of our participation’.” Despite the fact that the freedom of participation is opening up towards the public, new rules and restrictions are following up to create a new world order. One of the challenges over participation that I identified is the keyword search on Weibo, a Chinese Twitter. Government control is a huge problem here. Usually the popular keyword search (resembles the popular hashtags in facebook)decides the topic directions among all the users; however, when this list of keywords is made up, is controlled, then the true reflection will be led astray—the government or media institutions will decide the hot topics they want the public to know about and eliminate the undesirables. Same here in western countries, the corporations may have the ability to change the topic directions by altering the hot hashtags or over-emphasizing a certain topic.
That being said, with the fast development of technologies and culture convergence, the world we are facing now is rapidly renewing, evolving into a new “cultural order”. The incessant waves of a refreshed era is coming at us; there will be developments, changes, betrayals, lies, fights, victories and losses……just like any other historical period throughout the time. And the rules of it will be broken again in the future, followed by endless broken-downs and renewals……
To quote a line from Lady Mary in ‘Downton Abbey’, “the world is changing,” and I think, changing constantly.
These multiple forms of media convergence are leading us toward a digital renaissance – a period of transition and transformation that will affect all aspects of our lives.
The digital renaissance will be the best of times and the worst of times, but a new cultural order will emerge from it…
——Henry Jenkins, 2001
