Anyone who wants to know what I am thinking about these days should check out my new blog at www.henryjenkins.org.
A journalist described me once as "looking like a mountain
man who happens to be a genius" and as "comfortably overweight." Not sure exactly what they meant...
I have three new books coming out later this year. Two of them, Fans, Bloggers and Gamers: Exploring Participatory Culture and The Wow Climax: Emotion in Popular Culture are collections of essays I had published previously.
Here's what the blurb for Fans, Bloggers, and Gamers says:
FANS, BLOGGERS, AND GAMERS
Essays on Participatory Culture
Henry Jenkins
"Jenkins is a one of us: a geek, a fan, a popcult packrat. He's also an incisive and unflinching critic. His affection for the subject and sharp eye for 'what it all means'are an unbeatable combination. This is fascinating, engrossing and enlightening reading."
--Cory Doctorow, author of Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town and co-editor of Boing Boing
Henry Jenkins' pioneering work in the early 1990s promoted the idea that fans are among the most active, creative, critically engaged, and socially connected consumers of popular culture and that they represent the vanguard of a new relationship with mass media. Though marginal and largely invisible to the general public at the time, today, media producers and advertisers, not to mention researchers and fans, take for granted the idea that the success of a media franchise depends on fan investments and participation.
Bringing together the highlights of a decade and a half of groundbreaking research into the cultural life of media consumers, Fans, Bloggers, and Gamers takes readers from Jenkins's early work defending fan culture against those who would marginalize or stigmatize it, through to his more recent writing, combating moral panic and defending Goths and gamers in the wake of the Columbine shootings. Starting with an interview on the current state of fan studies, this volume maps the core theoretical and methodological issues in Fan Studies. It goes on to chart the growth of participatory culture on the web, take up blogging as perhaps the most powerful illustration of how consumer participation impacts mainstream media, and debate the public policy implications surrounding participation and intellectual property.
My big new book is Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide.
Here's what it says on the back of the book:
Convergence Culture maps a new territory: where old and new media intersect, where grassroots and corporate media collide, where the power of the media producer and the power of the consumer interact in unpredictable ways.
Henry Jenkins, one of Americas most respected media analysts, delves beneath the new-media hype to uncover the important cultural transformations that are taking place as media converge. He takes us into the secret world of Survivor Spoilers, where avid internet users pool their knowledge to unearth the shows secrets before they are revealed on the air. He introduces us to young Harry Potter fans who are writing their own Hogwarts tales while executives at Warner Brothers struggle for control of their franchise. He shows us how The Matrix has pushed transmedia storytelling to new levels, creating a fictional world where consumers track down bits of the story across multiple media channels.
Jenkins argues that struggles over convergence will redefine the face of American popular culture. Industry leaders see opportunities to direct content across many channels to increase revenue and broaden markets. At the same time, consumers envision a liberated public sphere, free of network controls, in a decentralized media environment. Sometimes corporate and grassroots efforts reinforce each other, creating closer, more rewarding relations between media producers and consumers. Sometimes these two forces are at war.
Jenkins provides a riveting introduction to the world where every story gets told and every brand gets sold across multiple media platforms. He explains the cultural shift that is occurring as consumers fight for control across disparate channels, changing the way we do business, elect our leaders, and educate our children.
Henry Jenkins is the DeFlorz Professor of Humanities and the Founder/Director of the Comparative Media Studies Program at MIT. The author or editor of eleven books including Textual Poachers: Television Fans and Participatory Culture and Hop on Pop: The Politics and Pleasures of Popular Culture, Jenkins also writes a regular column for Technology Review.
"One of those rare works that is closer to an operating system than a traditional book: it's a platform that people will be building on for years to come. What's more, the book happens to be a briskly entertaining read -- as startling, inventive, and witty as the culture it documents. It should be mandatory reading for anyone trying to make sense of today's popular culture -- but thankfully, a book this fun to read doesn't need a mandate."
--Steven Johnson, author of the national bestseller, Everything Bad Is Good For You: How Today's Popular Culture Is Actually Making Us Smarter
"I thought I knew 21st century pop media until I read Henry Jenkins. The fresh research and radical insights in Convergence Culture deserve a wide and thoughtful readership. Bring on the monolithic block of eyeballs!"
--Bruce Sterling, author, blogger, visionary
"Henry Jenkins offers crucial insight into an unexpected and unforeseen future. Unlike most predictions about how New Media will shape the world in which we live, the reality is turning out far stranger and more interesting than we might have imagined. The social implications of this change could be staggering."
--Will Wright, designer of SimCity and The Sims
"Henry Jenkins is the 21st century McLuhan Ive been waiting for. With all the fuzzy generalities, moral panics, and gloomy pronouncements from industry spokesmen and social critics, Jenkins's clearly communicated and nuanced analysis is sorely needed. The world McLuhan foretold back in the age of electric mediahas become immensely more complicated in today's many-to-many, converged, remixed and mashed-up, digital, mobile, always-on media environment. If you are a parent, a student, an educator, a creator or consumer of popular culture, an entrepreneur, or a media industry executive, you need to understand convergence culture. And you will only after reading Henry Jenkins.
--Howard Rheingold, author of Smart Mobs: The Next Social Revolution
"I simply could not put this book down! Henry Jenkins provides a fascinating account of how new media intersects old media and engages the imagination of fans in more and more powerful ways. Educators, media specialists, policy makers and parents will find Convergence Culture both lively and enlightening."
--John Seely Brown, Former Chief Scientist, Xerox Corp & director of Xerox PARC
