Core Post #3- Rojeen

    In “The Cultural Logic of Media Convergence,” Henry Jenkins grapples with a very contemporary debate regarding the nature of media convergence and its long-term impacts on producers and consumers. Jenkins envisions the future of media where the collective intelligence of audiences shapes commercial media, writing, “we need to move from a politics based on culture-jamming – that is, disrupting the flow of media from an outside position – towards one based on blogging – that is, actively shaping the flow of media,” (36). While he makes a great case as to how blogging and active engagement had mobilized anti-war activists to push back against the jingoist rhetoric during the Vietnam War, it seems too simple of a solution for the multifaceted landscape of media that exists today. In ways, bloggers and fandom have cultivated social and cultural capital that has caused producers to shift plot lines in shows or content in mainstream media, but active participation doesn’t necessarily equate to asserting power in how our cultural and media politics are formed. For instance, this piece had me thinking a lot about Democracy Now!, the independent media non-profit organization that has resisted convergence with corporate media, refusing corporate interference with their program. It is because they do not kowtow to corporate funding that they have the means to produce quality, activist-based, radical news coverage that rarely exists in mainstream media. Talking heads on their shows aren’t “experts” or politicians, but rather academics, public intellectuals, and independent journalists. Doesn’t there need to be a large-scale change and shift from working with media conglomerates to mobilizing the reach of grassroots productions in order to gain just social and cultural capital, in order to shape our own culture? In 2019, when CBS and Viacom announced their merger, it was to stave off competition from Disney, Netflix and other entertainment giants. Someone on twitter pointed out that after the merger, CBS and Viacom would acquire 20% of the national TV ad market. Using CBS and Viacom as an example, the result of media convergence impacts which national/international issues receive coverage and how these issues are addressed, framed, and discussed. If Democracy Now! worked with media conglomerates, would they extend audience reach and enable a cultural shift, or would the more obvious assumption be that their ideals would be compromised to fit the mission/ideological views of the corporations?

     I guess my frustration with Jenkins is that he believes consumers can participate in shaping American popular culture by their own means of actively engaging/interacting with corporations and the government. He writes, “to play that role, we need to shed some of our own intellectual and ideological blinders, to avoid kneejerk or monolithic formulations and to imagine new possible relations with corporate and government interests,” (42).  And maybe I’ve allowed my own intellectual and ideological blinders to approach this piece with pessimism, but the monopoly and capital that media conglomerates have over the market make a consumer-based cultural shift seem untenable.