Convergence Culture 49
javathut writes "Perhaps an alternate title for this book could have been "understanding your audience." For any Sony PS3 execs out there wondering why their technological masterpiece is being ridiculed by customers months before it's even released, or what the long-term repercussions of their DRM policies will be, Convergence Culture is a must read. Drawing upon case examples of how a variety of user communities adopt digital technologies, sometimes in ways completely opposite from what the designers intended, Jenkins offers numerous insights on how technology and media professionals can forge better relationships with their customers." Read the rest of Ravi's review.
| Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide | |
| author | Henry Jenkins |
| pages | 336 |
| publisher | New York University Press |
| rating | 10 |
| reviewer | Ravi Purushotma |
| ISBN | 0814742815 |
| summary | Convergence Culture offers numerous insights on how technology and media professionals can forge better relationships with their customers |
In one example, he follows the progression of the Harry Potter franchise after Warner Brothers purchased the film rights. In the interest of protecting their trademark, the studio sent out cease-and-desist letters to an online network of pre/teen [largely] girls who had been writing and sharing stories about Harry Potter as a way of learning to improve their writing skills. Rather than desisting, they coordinated a global protest that became a major P.R. headache for Warner Brothers -- who ultimately had to back down. This is likened to the confused message LucasFilms sent its customers when its movie division attempted to litigate control of the Star Wars storyline away from fans, while at the same LucasArts was trying to encourage players of Star Wars Gallaxies to explore and expand the Star Wars universe.
By themselves, the case studies are perhaps not that dissimilar from the many other accounts of industry execs completely botching their community relations. However, as the director of the Comparative Media Studies program at MIT, Jenkins adds some insightful perspectives on thinking about technology and the structuring of new-media companies in response to internet communities. Contrasting the typical response of U.S. companies to technologies like filesharing, he looks at the attitudes of Japanese anime and manga producers -- outlining how their more open attitudes could have influenced the current popularity of Japanese-origin franchises within the United States. Similarly, he looks at the corporate structure behind the Matrix franchise (in particular the Enter The Matrix video game), demonstrating how elements of The Matrix design process could serve as a model for other industries.
The book also contains a second thread running through it looking at 'collective intelligence.' Basically, this can be thought of as a sort of Wisdom of Crowds view of what happens when customers become so tightly networked with one another that they can overpower media producers. One chapter looks at the tv series Survivor and how online spoiler teams shared satellite data, local knowledge and social networks to determine the show's conclusion before it aired. Rather than simply fighting efforts such as these as was done with Survivor, Jenkins outlines examples of how collective intelligence communities could be harnessed to advance products or causes. Using the extensive accomplishments of the 600,000 players in the popular Alternate Reality Game I Love Bees as a model for what is ultimately possible, he outlines how viral marketing, politics and other domains are changing in response to the increasing collaborative abilities of networked fans.
Having previously taken classes with Professor Jenkins, I had long been looking forward to the release of this book. Reading it, I was glad to find the same clear focus on real-world examples and practical applications that was emphasized in his classes. Overall, it reads far more similar to titles like Steven Johnson's Everything Bad is Good for You or Howard Rheingold's Smart Mobs than anything you'd expect from an academic professor.
As the subtitle "where old and new media collide" suggests, the book contains a pretty even split between traditional broadcast/cinematic media and web/video game/mobile media. Anyone interested only in a single media form probably won't find this book that different from any others on their topic. Rather, most of the more unique insights come from Jenkins's understanding of how these different media forms interact to re-enforce one another, and the ways in which consumers navigate between multiple media forms and online channels.
While most of the theories put forth in the book will likely remain relevant for years to come, a few of the case studies are already showing their age. For example, the Star Wars Gallaxies discussion appears to be written before the recent shakeup at Sony Online. This means readers will need to go beyond the book to remain fully up-to-date with some of the examples.
Overall, any reader should find Convergence Culture an extensively researched book using a conversational writing style that makes it truly engaging to read and clearly accessible. However, those in charge of managing community relations, online presence or designing media to cross multiple platforms would likely benefit from it the most.
Disclaimer Notice: The review author is a former MIT student who took classes taught by Henry Jenkins on this topic."
You can purchase Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
Disclaimer (Score:5, Informative)
Wiki link [wikipedia.org] for Henry Jenkins
One of the first scholars to seriously study the effects of audience participation in media culture and its effects, and recognized as an expert in the influence of digital popular culture on behavior, including political behavior in a participatory media age.
Information Wants to be free and shifty (Score:3, Informative)
updates (Score:2, Informative)
New Coke (Score:3, Informative)
Coca-Cola had been enjoying tremendous success with a recent product, Diet Coke. So at some point the big brains at Coca-Cola decided that they might as well reform their product line so that all the Coke products had a similar taste.
It seems that, due to FDA restrictions on various artificial sweeteners in the U.S., Coca-Cola was not able to come up with a sugar free formula that tasted exactly like regular Coke. Instead, they decided not to try -- they came up with a new formula that tasted something like Coke, but different. Thus was Diet Coke born. Diet Coke has never been based on the same formula as the product we now know as Coca-Cola Classic.
Well, Diet Coke sold like gangbusters (seen much Tab around lately?). It stood to reason that some of the sales of Diet Coke were coming from customers who had previously bought regular Coke and who were attracted to the low-calorie aspect -- so, Diet Coke was technically eating sales from regular Coke. Diet Coke is a little sweeter than regular Coke, so it also stood to reason that sales of Diet Coke were coming from people who might otherwise prefer Pepsi (which is typically also a little sweeter than Coke). This was great.
A longstanding problem with the marketing of sugar free soft drinks in the United States, however, has been the word "diet." In Europe they don't tend to use it. Sugar free Coke is called "Coke Lite" in Europe (and, coincidentally, it is based on the regular Coke formula). But in the U.S. there is a strong demographic that responds to the word Diet. There is also, however, a large demographic that does not respond to it -- namely manly men who won't eat anything that pretends to be low calorie.
So given this conflagration of events, what would you do? Chances are, you would do exactly what Coke did: Change the formula of Coke so that it has the slightly sweeter flavor of Diet Coke, but has all the sugar and doesn't have the word "diet" on the can. That way, regular Coke could continue the trend of eating up Pepsi's sales by appealing to the broader demographic that wasn't reached by Diet Coke.
Well, it turned out that this was a misstep. One problem was that nobody ever told anyone that Diet Coke had a different formula than regular Coke. Loyal Coke customers knew that "Coke tastes better than Pepsi." What they didn't realize was that, by that logic, Coke also tasted better than Diet Coke. They were willing to ignore the slightly different taste, chalking it up to the sugar-free sweetener instead of an actual change in formula. Old Coke loyalists wanted nothing to do with the new formula, however; the classic product was serving their needs just fine.
So Coke failed to understand its own market. There was a huge backlash. But did it hurt Coke, really? Consider:
- Old Coke was back on the shelves within a few months, under the name Coca-Cola Classic. It was sold alongside New Coke, giving customers plenty of opportunity to buy lots of both and taste-test for themselves.
- Newspapers ate up the story of this controversy, which meant that Coke got plenty of free press headlines all throughout the summer of the "Cola Wars."
- It gave Coca-Cola an opportunity to rethink their branding and marketing and retool their products around nostalgia for classic Coca-Cola marketing
So was it a misstep? Yeah. A failure? I doubt it. A learning opportunity, if anything, and one that Coke bounced right back from.
P.S. You'll notice that Coca-Cola has a new sugar free cola product on the market now. This one is based on the Classic Coke formula, because the FDA restrictions on artificial