This headline from Google News Tuesday morning picks up on a massive trend in our culture. Using just Harry Potter as our example the HP phenomenon has spread to video games, fan fiction, home-made trailers, Facebook/MySpace pages, mobile applications and countless more ways in which fans can fully immerse themselves in the wizarding world. Things like Kinects allow you to become the controller in a Harry Potter video game (http://harrypotter.ea.com/NA/?the-game). Media in one form is being distributed in many different forms and today are highly influenced by audience (that’s you!) participation.
(Trailer for the Harry Potter video game)
Why is this Harry Potter craze important to you? It is a part of a series of trends in our culture today that we can succinctly define as convergence culture.
Henry Jenkins is a professor from the University of Southern California. In his book, Convergence Culture, he defines this progression of society. He uses the term "convergence culture" to refer to two main ideas: a much greater degree of audience participation and profoundly active and influential fan-base and an extremely wide range of ways that things like our music and movies are made available to us.
While some people have taken this concept and made it into pirating and copyright infringement, there are many positive (and legal!) ways that you can become involved with convergence culture. How YOU consume media plays a direct part in what will come next in media. Bands are now uploading music to their websites as opposed to making CDs. Political figures have Facebook pages. Books are available online with mediums like Kindle and Google Books. You wanted interactivity and Apple came out with the iPhone and apps ("There's an app for that!").You have a distinct voice and power. Jenkins closes his book with these inspiring words... "Welcome to convergence culture, where old and new media collide, where grassroots and corporate media intersect, where the power of the media producer and the power of the media consumer interact in unpredictable ways. Convergence culture is the future, but it is taking shape now. Consumers will be more powerful within convergence culture--but only if they recognize that power as both consumers and citizens, as full participants in our culture."
By Sammi and Melissa
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