Jenkins

 Key Learning: To explore Jenkins theory of fandom and apply his ideas to changes in audience, representation, media language and industry.

“Fanfiction is a way of the culture repairing the damage done in a system where contemporary myths are owned by corporations instead of owned by folk.”
― Henry Jenkins

Big Bang Theory

A parody of super fans.

So what?

Henry Jenkins argues that fans have played a hugely important role in the development of the evolving media ecology.

Sheldon and his friends are an example of a participatory audience. An audience who are using technology and their cognitive surplus (Shirky) to reclaim or appropriate a narrative (idea) owned by media industries and moreover audiences are insert themselves into their own version of that text or narrative. This can lead to audience communities being active agents for change in the real world and subverting the dominant ideology associated with the original text.

Henry Jenkins and Fandom (aka participatory culture)

In Summary

Jenkins believes that technology has enabled a deeper level of engagement from audiences with the media and that they are using democratised media to affect changes in the world around them.

Essentially democratised media has empowered audiences to participate and this is a sort of superpower which fans are using to engage in the media environment and important issues like never before.

He argues that fandom is on the cutting edge of a new kind of social and political discourse. What started looking frivolous, not to mention a bit nerdy, has given rise to some big changes in the media ecology as well as public debate.

He would suggest you can draw a straight line from fandom  to crowd sourced political movements such as, #metoo, BLM, trans activism, Extinction Rebellion, Just Stop Oil.

A list of alternative Fan Groups

Wiki Fandom

Fandom and The Music Industry

Mark Ronson on being a textual poacher

Summary

Ronson describes the way in which he operated as a textual poacher and is unapologetic for sampling, recycling and creating new music based off the samples of others.

Ronson was a producer who used the opportunities offered by technology to participate, engage and ultimately shape the future of music.

A Media Magazine Article on the Dark side of Fandom:

What exam can I use this in?

Glossary of Terms

  • Participatory audience – another word for prosumers. Audiences who not only consume the media but also are members of communities making and sharing their own content.
  • Cognitive surplus – The collective power to share, redistribute, edit, share, redistribute… of crowds.
  • Dominant ideology – Mainstream values, attitudes and beliefs (grand narratives)
  • Textual poacher – an audience member who appropriates (borrows) elements of other texts and reworks them for their own ends.
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