Chapter 5- March 19th, 2013

Chapter 5 in Convergence Culture focuses on the Harry Potter Franchise as an example of media engaged by fan participation that can scare the corporate media forces. The chapter begins by describing participation by fans of J.K. Rowling’s literary works. When the books were first published, there was an enormous outcry by those on the Religious right to block Harry Potter books from school libraries because of the novel’s “support for witchcraft” and mysticism.

Since all sides want to control what children do and read because its the key to controlling the future, this was a big issue. Children in particular loved the Harry Potter series and consumed the associated books, movies, and video games voraciously. The books opened up massive channels for kids to express their love for fantasy and a world outside their own. Children develop cultural literacy by integrating familiar elements into their daily lives and regurgitating them in other sources to better explain it.

MAKE UP – Online Participation In Society

Thank You Dr.B for the makeup opportunity!

Flashing back to Rhiengold, we learn of the concept of Social Capital, which is directly related to the way people evaluate recommendations and reviews online. In a crowded marketplace like the one we live in, I find myself seeking reviews from the internet when searching for new products to buy or even where to go for dinner.
I asked my roommates girlfriend about a restaurant in Lexington called Doodles. This restaurant has great reviews online yet she said she didn’t have a great experience. I went to Yelp and trusted the 100+ glowing reviews over someone I have known for years! The meal was indeed fantastic and it looks like her experience was an isolated one.

Me trusting the wisdom of crowds online over a personal friend is an example of the enormous social capital emphasizes in this reading. Fowler says that friends of friends form a third of as much influence as direct contacts have! If I assume I have 150 close friends multiplied by several hundred – that’s a ton of contacts!

Week 7 – Jenkins Chapters 3 and 4

Chapter 3, entitled “Searching for the Origami Unicorn” focuses on Trans-media storytelling and in particular, its relation to the hit movie, The Matrix. A pioneering film for the way it meshed reality and fantasy, the film franchise (there were many Matrix sequels) was fantastically lucrative. With an enormously complex plotline and character base, the Matrix was far to large an idea to be contained to one medium. Rather it was explored again and again in video games, books, and several film sequels. Detailing the attempted takeover of the human race by nefarious alien agents on earth, The Matrix was and is, mind numbingly complex.

By requiring consumers to buy into multiple mediums simply to understand the single movie premier, the promoters and directors of the franchise were highly profitable. Full of hidden messages and codes in the movie, fans had to make sure to get the latest video game or next sequel that premiered. Jenkins uses the example of the Matrix and later, the Star Wars franchise to explore how co-creation, or co-ownership of content could function. In this way, developers and creators of different media types could collaborate from the very origin of the medias infancy and avoid costly and damaging protectionist lawsuits later on. 

The site of the week is Storify, a content generator that finds information from many sources and compiles them into an easy to read feed that draws from multiple content sources to deafen the “noise” that is claims is encountered by anyone trying to browse the web and catch up on the current voices at that instant.

Storify lets you curate social networks to build social stories, bringing together media scattered across the Web into a coherent narrative.

In the Storify editor, you can search social media networks to find media elements about the topic you want to Storify. Look through Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Flickr, Instagram and more to gather material for your stories.

Link of the week: http://readwrite.com/2013/03/01/businesses-finally-get-social-media

http://storify.com/tour