What I got out of Henry Jenkins’ lecture is that the sources and type of media has basically taken a full circle. He talks about how democracy is more prominent in today’s media, such as YouTube, blogs, etc, just like in the past when different types of media was first emerging. As an example, Jenkins used the radio. When the radio was first becoming popular, basically anyone could broadcast. Between then and now, media became CNN type texts and less participatory. The media was put in less and less hands. Bigger corporations started buying up traditional media, the radio became much more centralized, and messages were provided by less sources. Now, it has gone back to how it was in the past, there is more convergence as participatory media has become more prevalent. For example, YouTube, even camera phones, have become a huge source of media. To start out his book, Jenkins talks about spoilers and how their communities work, using Survivor as an example. I thought the ways the producers threw off the spoilers was really sneaky/funny in a way. It is interesting to see how spoilers make up a community and keep it running by using their own knowledge/skills and add on to that of the other people in the community. While I was reading this, I thought, why can’t they use their “spoiling skills” on something a little more important such as debating a specific, important topic instead of wasting their time on a silly reality show? But I guess Jenkins is right in how in order to do that, you can’t really do anything else except for study the debate topic and become an expert at it, whereas there’s more freedom in spoiling a reality show, and for the more obvious reason: it’s just fun for them.
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