Convergence Culture

View the Table of Contents . Read the Introduction .Henry Jenkins at Authors@Google (video)”This book rocks for anyone with concerns about the immediate and future direction of media, culture, and omnipresence.” --Business 2 BusinessWinner of the 2007 Society for Cinema and Media Studies Katherine Singer Kovacs Book Award”The standard convergence narrative of recent years presents media concentration as a threat both to the diversity of communication channels and to individuals’ opportunities to engage in public discourse. A respected and well-established media scholar, Jenkins (MIT) here counters such pessimistic perspectives on the brave new media world with theoretical and evidentiary attestations to the growing power of individuals and grassroots groups to affect the larger media landscape.” --Choice”Jenkins is an astute observer of media culture and his insights are spot-on. . . . He intends his book to be a powerful tool both now and in the future. . . . This is a book to be praised. It raises many issues.” --Los Angeles Times”Remarkable. . . . Jenkins' insights are gripping and his prose is surprisingly entertaining and lucid for a book that is, at its core, intellectually rigorous. . . . Jenkins' impressive ability to break down complex concepts into readable prose makes this study vital and engaging.” --Publishers Weekly”Jenkins tries to bring clarity to cultural changes that are melting and morphing into new shapes on an hourly, daily, weekly, monthly basis. Convergence Culture provides a view that looks at the restless ocean and tracks the currents rather than just looking at the individual rocks on the beach.” --The McClatchy Newspapers”I thought I knew twenty-first 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”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”Henry Jenkins is the 21st century McLuhan I've been waiting for. With all the fuzzy generalities, moral panics, and gloomy pronouncements from industry spokesmen and social critics, Jenkins' clearly communicated and nuanced analysis is sorely needed. The world McLuhan foretold back in the age of 'electric media' has 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 wil

Henry Jenkins is the Peter de Florez Professor of Humanities and the Founder/Director of the Comparative Media Studies Program at MIT.