comics and convergence part three

This is the third of a series of out-takes from Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide which centers on convergence within the comics industry. This segment explores the ways that online communities are altering the ways that comics readers and publishers interact. A small portion of this content found its way into the book's conclusion in a significantly altered form, but the rest of it is appearing here for the first time.

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Survivor: The Race Wars?

Last week, the producers of Survivor announced that this season, they would feature what is almost certainly the most racially diverse cast in the history of reality television. The contestants would initially be organized into four tribes defined around their race -- African-American, Asian-American, Hispanic, and White-American. The announcement has provoked controversy from the very outset with even CBS Early Show host Harry Smith challenging Survivor M.C. Jeff Probst about the story line on the air.

Today's post is intended as a primer of sorts to the debates about race which this announcement have set into motion.

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Tracking the MySpace Generation...

The Los Angeles Times recently completed a first rate series describing the media consumption practices of the contemporary youth market. "Tracking the MySpace Generation" reflected the results of a large scale survey of 12-24 year olds that shatters many of the myths that have emerged around the so-called digital generation, while at the same time focusing attention on some very important shifts in the ways people relate to media content.

Youth and Civic Media

Contrary to the myth (which I debunked here a few months ago), young people are not more apt to vote for the next American Idol than to participate in the next presidental election.

Only 21% of poll respondents ages 18 to 24 said they had voted for an American Idol contestant. But 53% said they had voted for a candidate for public office.

This is consistent with other research that has shown that young people are civically engaged, care about political issues, but often seek out information through different channels than older generations.

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Fan Activism in a Networked Culture: The Case of Stargate SG-1

Last week, on the eve of its 200th episode, the Sci-Fi Channel announced that it would not be renewing Stargate SG-1, ending a run that extended across 10 seasons. The series began on Showtime, where it was canceled after five seasons, and then, as the result of fan activism, got picked up by the Sci-Fi Channel, where it ran another five season and spawned a successful sequel, Stargate: Atlantis.

One might imagine that the series was dying a natural death after a run which is far longer than the vast majority of series -- science fiction or otherwise -- in the history of American television or that the network and creative artists are performing a "mercy killing" of a series that might be well past its prime but as far as its most hardcore fans are concerned, the series is "not dead yet." They are seeking to rally the troops one more time and their efforts to do so demonstrate the potentials for audience activism within networked culture.

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Getting Lost

I've been sitting out the conversation that Jason Mittell, Jane McGonigal, and Ian Bogost have been having about Lost, Twin Peaks, serial fiction, and puzzles until now. I have had limited time to write new content the past week or so.

One of the thing that interests me about this conversation is that it suggests what ludologists and narrativists can learn from each other if they actually talked amongst themselves. I am finding myself pulled back and forth as I read this discussion in part because both groups have valid points and a lot rests on how one reads the series. I m learning so much by looking at television through the eyes of game designers like Jane and Ian.

Puzzles or Enigmas?

Lost is a series that works on multiple levels:
1) There are indeed puzzles (defective ones, perhaps, but ones that seem engaging to an awful lot of folks who watch the series): what's inside the hatch, what's the status of the Island (social experiment, purgatory, what have you), what can we learn from deciphering the map, what do those numbers mean, etc.

2) There is all of the well-constructed backstory -- with each character allowing us a point of entry into a slightly different genre and into a different world.

3) there is the unfolding life of the castaways and the world they are building for themselves on the island -- all of the interpersonal politics, the stories of redemption or corruption, the issue of how they are going to deal with the Others, etc.

Lost is very very good at pitting these differebt pleasures and interests against another, with some new information added at each level in any given episode and the satisfaction of one level of interest being used to defer resolution on another level. Lost is a very well constructed serial fiction in that regard. Some of these pleasures are game-like in their dependence on puzzles, mazes, and ciphers; others are narrative in their dependence on enigmas.

The combination of puzzles and enigmas seems especially effective at motivating fan engagement and participation. This accounts for how Lost can work, in my book's terms, both as a textual attractor (drawing together a community that shares a common interest) and a textual activator (feeding that community something to do, some information to process, some knowledge to gather).

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Snake Eyes

Squawk. Slurp.

Squawk. Slurp.

This is the sound of me eating crow. I'll admit that I fell prey to some of the hype about the Snakes phenomenon when I predicted several months ago that it might result in one of the strongest opening weekends this summer.

Now that the dust has settled, it is pretty clear that this isn't what happened. In fact, Snakes did manage to be the top box office earner last week but it barely broke beyond $15M, there's some dispute as to whether it really came out on top of the Talladega Nights, and there were three other films (none of them huge box office champs) that were only a few million dollars under it. All told, it was a pretty lackluster weekend at the box office -- as might be predicted by a late summer release date.

At the moment, New Line is getting caught by the expectations game. The media has turned the Snakes box office into a referendum of sorts on the new kind of collaborative relationship between media producers and consumers. They are taking its "failure" to meet some inflated expectations as evidence that internet based marketing doesn't work. I suppose we should use the below expectations performance of any number of films this summer as signs that movie previews and television commercials just aren't enough to open a movie.

Let's be clear that the hype surrounding Snakes was partially built on line and partially built through traditional media channels. What portion of you first learned about Snakes on the internet and what portion read about internet interest in the film in Entertainment Weekly or USA Today? The new seems very good at innovating and experimenting; the broadcast channels though play a crucial role in amplifying those voices and getting them in front of mainstream consumers. In the case of Snakes, the double whammy of internet activism and media hype has succeeded in creating a very high level of awareness of this particular film but was not enough to overcome some core skepticism about the core premise. I found this out talking to my mother-in-law and sister-in-law this weekend: neither is much of a film buff; most films pass through town without registering on their radar; but both knew about s Snakes and knew that it was the film that was generating such interest on line. That's no small accomplishment for viral marketing.

Of course, one might well question the motives of traditional journalists who have jumped with such glee on the Snakes phenomenon and tried to flatten the idea that fans might play an active role in promoting a motion picture. Here's a sample of some of the scorn thrown at fans of the film following the box office returns:

The Internet buzz over "Snakes on a Plane" turned out to be nothing to hiss about. (Yahoo)

The horror-comedy starring Samuel L. Jackson took in $15.2 million last weekend, a tepid opening that dashed the hopes of Hollywood and especially of New Line Cinema, which released the movie, that vigorous marketing on the Internet would be a powerful new way to propel fans into theaters at a time when movies are working hard to hold their own against other forms of entertainment. ( *Seattle Post-Intelligencer)
Despite a year of blog-fueled fanatacism that spilled over into the mainstream media in recent weeks, Snakes on a Plane didn't exactly sink its fangs into the box office. (E Online)

Of course, such writers may have a personal motive for proving that the public may not be ready to decide for itself which new releases are worth getting excited about. After all, these are the people who have historically played a gatekeeping function within our culture.

At the same time, fan groups are lining up to suggest that the low box office was actually the product of the studio's efforts to capitalize on the grassroots buzz rather than letting things play out on their own, as reader Stefanie Kechayas, a media student at the University of Melbourne doing thesis work on movie marketing and the online community, explains:

SoaP has not been released in Australia yet (is released Thursday), but I wanted to add what I thought was a really interesting trend on the websites I'm looking at. Yesterday, all the sites began to report on the "poor" performance of SoaP at the U.S. Box Office at the weekend. In trying to analyse why the film performed as it did there seems to be a "blame game" happening. Devin Faraci at CHUD, in particular, (just as he was with Firefly) is preoccupied with the fan vs. studio angle. These websites seem to have a major issue with the way the film went from being a 'genuine' cybersubcultural fascination (because of subcultural manifestations of cool and knowledges about 'good' and 'bad' cinema turning the film into one big joke) to being capitalised by studios into a 'mainstream' marketing extravaganza (hence detracting from the film's - and subculture's - countercultural clout). Through this over-capitalisation and also a too long wait on the release, the film has lost its interest factor (its 'undergroundness') and hence underperformed, and this - according to these sites - is the studio's fault.

I find this fascinating because, I think, this convergence between producers and consumers has been happening for years now and this transition between what is seen as sub or counter-cultural capital and mainstream cultural capital is nothing new. I think the difference now is that these websites and subcultures are beginning to realise what's been going on, and are not sure how they feel about it. They are fan groups and they do display some of the hallmarks of textual poaching and ownership as well as strongly displaying their capital through professionalism common in most fan groups studied. Yet they are uncomfortable with the power shifts that are occurring. This is not he first time these sites have been poached for information by film producers (look at the "planted review" phenomenon, or the new film Fanboys), and yet there is still a great amount of animosity directed towards studios and their marketing techniques. When a film underperforms, wether critically or financially, these groups blame the
studios. When a film performs well at the box office, these sites either give the film text critical merit or credit the studios with good marketing. Interestingly though, the sites place themselves also in judgement of other more hardcore fan groups, like Star Wars Fanboys and Browncoats. Devin blamed the Browncoats' over-zealousness for grass roots advertising for effectively scaring away average movie goers, amongst other reasons. And yet he rejects the blame for SoaP, drawing a major distinction between Internet Movie Fans and 'hardcore' fans. The Hollywood Film Review Websites and Internet Movie Fans I'm looking at seem to want to situate themselves as a place of convergence of power between consumers and producers, and yet really seem to struggle with their place in it, when push comes to shove. Ironically, although the Internet Movie Fans are angry that the studios took what was originally going to be a 'cult hit' only known to a niche group and tried to make it mainstream, the film hasn't earned blockbuster levels and may well actually turn into a genuine 'cult hit.'

But let's not be in such a big hurray to dismiss what's happened here. I would have loved to see Snakes outgross Pirates (or at least Superman Returns). But that may have been the wrong criteria for evaluating the success of internet based marketing. The idea of large opening weekend grosses is itself a product of mass marketing. In a world where films are designed to appeal to the broadest possible public, broadcasting makes sense as a way of getting out your message and the success of this strategy is going to be measured by how many people you can get into the theatre the first week. But, if you read Chris Anderson's Long Tail argument, he suggests that niche properties require longer shelf time to find their audience: they start slower, they last longer.

In this case, the hype was enough to heightened awarenes about the film but not enough to overcome skepticism. Some thought the film wouldn't be any good. Others worried that the film wouldn't be bad enough.

The folks who came on the opening weekend might be seen as the early adapters. Most of what we've heard here suggests that many of them liked what they saw. They are going to go back and reassure their friends. We need to wait and see whether the film has legs -- whether it's pattern is closer to the classic sleeper that holds steady over a number of weeks. We need to see whether the high awareness of the film translates into strong dvd sales. We need to see how the film performs internationally. We need to see how the film does on college campuses and on the midnight film circuit. Only then will we really be able to judge how much and what kind of impact the online phenomenon had in terms of shaping the success of this film.

David Edery makes a similar point in his discussion of the film at Game Tycoon:

To be blunt: the naysayers are wrong. What they don't seem to realize is that this movie could very well have been a disaster. The premise was ridiculous. Critics, not primed to think of the movie as camp, might have panned the hell out of it. Online fan communities gave this movie's creators a remarkable opportunity to turn a zero into something more. And they did!

Industry observers like John Hamann of Box Office Prophets seem on the cusp of understanding this, even as they question the film's "disappointing numbers." A quote from Hamann: Snakes won't change anything, but it could start a decent-sized franchise for New Line, with huge revenue from DVD in the cards. With a reported cost of only $35 million, this will be an okay performer for a studio that has struggled since the last of the Lord of the Rings films.

Huge revenue from DVD in the cards? That isn't a consolation prize -- that's a real win (and perhaps a miracle for a film as poorly conceived as this one.)

Keep in mind that all of this rides as much on expectations as on realities. Suppose this had been a documentary, a foreign film, or an independent film: this level of performance would have been seen as spectacular. Suppose this was a few decades ago when something like Snakes would have been a B Movie playing at the local drive-end: the idea that this film could be the top money earner would have seemed astonishing. In another era, this film might have gone straight to dvd and certainly would have taken longer to reach the current level of success. We still haven't adjusted to a world where there will be hits and there will be niche successes (and of course there will be flop.) No matter how you cut it, Snakes isn't a flop: it simply isn't a blockbuster.

We are at a transitional moment: web communities are capable of generating strong support for niche products but they still can't compete with the mass market success generated from broadcast media. We need to learn to be more adept at thinkiing about the relations between the two. And we need to curb our enthusiasms enough to lower expectations.

Squawk. Slurp.

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comics and convergence part two

This entry continues the series of outtakes from Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide. Again, the primary focus is on comics. Here, the focus is on the ways comics content is moving into film and television as well as the ways that television and film content increasingly is moving into comics.

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Spelling Bees and Scrabble

Earlier this summer, I posted notice of a podcast featuring Scot Osterweil, the research manager of our Education Arcade initiatives and the creator of the Great Zoobinis game series. There are now two new installments on the web featuring Scott and his work on Zoobinis. This is part of a series focused on the people who are working together at MIT and at Maryland Public Radio on a new initiative called Learning Games to Go. (I recently taped some segments talking about my interests in games and education which will appear at some point down the line). These materials will be of interest to anyone who has been following the discussions here about serious games.

One of the most interesting segments in the new podcast with Scott Osterweill includes a comparison between the Spelling Bee and Scrabble as two models for how one might integrate games or contests into the learning process. It helps to distinguish between early edutainment products which had a drill and practice logic and more recent attempts to develop learning games which sees learning as a process of experimentation and exploration:

In a spelling bee, a kid is challenged to memorize a lot of word, there's a fair amount of pressure, and it's kind of grim. If they get a word wrong, the buzzer goes off, they're told they got it wrong, and they are out. There's never a discussion about why they got it wrong, how they could have reasoned about the word to get it right. There's never really much of a discussion about how that word could be used in speech. In fact, the goal for a spelling bee is to learn all sorts of words that you will never use in common speech. Compare that with a game of Scrabble where the kid sits with the letters in front of them and is moving them around, thinking endlessly about all of the different combinations of words and which ones are real. They try to play one and there's a discussion about whether that's a real word or whether that's a real form of the word. Through that process, kids are engaging deeply not just in spelling but in word usage and they're having fun while they are doing it. There's very little penalty for making a mistake. In fact, the game invites kids to take a risk. 'I'll try a word that I think I heard an adult say. I am not sure it is right but if I get it wrong, I am not out of the competition the way I am in a spelling bee.' So a child can play Scrabble and have a lot of fun at it and laugh at it and not even necessarily need to win to feel like they have accomplished something. That's the experience a game can provide a kid in terms of learning.

This comparison really resonated with me. Anyone who has read this blog has no doubt caught me make one or another really awful spelling mistake. I have struggled all of my life with being a bad speller. I still recall some of the humiliation I faced participating in spelling bees in school. I think I would have preferred having my teeth extracted in public rather than being asked to spell words in front of my classmates. The Spelling Bee may be a game but it isn't a fun or motivating game except for those kids who become very good at it. The Spelling Bee is a game where there are clear losers and it is no fun losing. On the other hand, I got to watch my nine year old nephew play Boggle this summer and I was amazed by the pleasure he took in identifying words from the random pile of letters in front of him. He could more than hold his own with players twice his age and I would hear him introduce words that he learned from game play into his conversation, sometimes weeks later. He would drag out the box and want anyone and everyone to play the game with him. I would have been a better speller today if my education looked more like Boggle or Scrabble and less like spelling bees.

The podcast does a great job capturing Scott Osterweill's unique perspective on the importance of developing learning games that are fun and motivating, that encourage kids to learn by taking risks and testing out new approaches, and that so engage the imagination that kids end up drawing pictures or writing stories about their avatars. The new set of podcasts also feature students and teachers who have been using his games in their classes as they share their thoughts about the value of a more playful approach to learning. The teachers offer a compelling case for the ways games can be integrated into curricular standards and why it matters that educational games feel like real video games.

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Good News for Aca/Fen

Some of you have asked what the phrase, "Aca/Fan" means. Basically, it is a term I made up some years ago to refer to people like myself who have one foot in academia and one foot in fandom. It is a hybrid identity -- Aca for Academic, Fan for, well, fan. The fen in the title above is a longstanding bit of fan slang -- essentially the plural of fan.

In my forthcoming book, Fans, Bloggers, and Gamers, I reproduce excerpts from a public dialogue I had some years ago with fellow aca/fan researcher Matt Hills for the now defunct online journal, Intensities. In that conversation, we talked a bit more about the relationship between fans and academics. Unfortunately, the interview itself is no longer online:

I think we need to consider different generations of scholars within fandom, and moments within which those scholars are working. I think there are at least three moments of fan studies that get conflated together as if they are a unified body of theory. There is a body of work that began to stress active audiences and the use of ethnographic methods, derived in part from sociological methods, and I would put early John Tulloch, John Fiske and Janice Radway in this body of work - they come from different places and so I don't want to lump them together as representing one totally unified body of work.

But it was important for these writers to be outside what they were writing about, to be free of any direct implication in their subject matter. They begin to acknowledge that audiences have an active role, but their prose is very depersonalized, there's often no acknowledgement of any affection they feel for the objects of study, or if there is, it's a token gesture. And there's sometimes an attempt to pull back from the fan community at the end of such writing and say, right, now we can arrive at the truth that the fans don't yet recognize about their own political activity. I've taken Radway to task for the closing chapter of Reading the Romance for that kind of gesture. That's the first generation.

I see myself and others writing at the same time, Camille [Bacon-Smith] to some degree , as a second generation that comes to a discourse already formulated around these axes of active/passive, resistance/co-opted. We're trying to find a way to alter that perception based on insider knowledge of what it is to be a fan, and struggling to find a language to articulate a different perspective that comes out of lived experience and situated knowledge. And it proves very difficult - there's a lot of resistance because the first generation are the readers responding to our manuscripts, the editors deciding whether they get published or not, the faculty deciding whether we get hired. So you end up struggling to negotiate between what you want to say, and what it's possible to say at a particular point in time, in order to get your work out at all. And there is a level of defensiveness there. When I was writing Textual Poachers I was so frustrated by how badly fans had been written about. As a fan I felt implicated in that writing and I wanted to challenge it; there are passages in the book that are just out-and-out defenses of fandom, and others that are trying to pull back and describe, analyze, critique....

Now, I think all of that work paved the way for a whole generation of aca-fen, as I like to call them; that is, people who are both academics and fans, for whom those identities are not problematic to mix and combine, and who are able then to write in a more open way about their experience of fandom without the 'obligation of defensiveness', without the need to defend the community. Therefore they can take up things like contradictions within it, disputes within it, re-raise awkward subjects that we papered over in our earlier accounts, and now there's a freedom to have real debate among ourselves about some of these core issues.

For those of you who have come to my blog in search of insights into participatory culture, you already know that I think fan culture is a particularly rich spot to understand ways that new media can be used to transform our relationship to mass media. I was asked about this by the fine folks at the British webzine, Big Shiny Thing, last week. Here's part of what I had to say:

Fans have been and are likely to continue to be the shock troops in this transformation of our culture -- highly motivated, passionately committed, and socially networked. They are early adopters of new technologies and willing to experiment with new relationships to culture. (We might also throw into this category other highly motivated groups such as bloggers and gamers.)

There are signs that fan culture practices and products are spreading throughout the culture. Recent statistics from the Pew Center of Internet and American Life found that more than half of teens online produce some form of media and many of them shared what they produced by others. They are part of the participatory culture I am describing. So are people who join discussion forms or sign up for RSS feeds to get more information about their favorite band or television program.

As writers like Will Wright and Raph Koster have suggested, there is a pyramid of participation. Not everyone will want to spend massive amounts of time generating new content -- some will simply want to engage with content others have produced. Not everyone will write fan stories -- some may share critical responses with the authors. Not everyone will want to spoil reality television programs -- some will simply enjoy the new relationships to the program the spoiler community helps to create for them. But the expansion of this participatory culture changes the context in which media content gets produced and distributed and thus it impacts all of us one way or another. Given this, I would imagine fans may still enjoy a privileged status in participatory culture but more and more people will benefit from the once invisible cultural work of fans.

New Blog on Online Fan Cultures

Given that, it should be good news to many of you that Nancy Baym, a prime example of that third generation of fan scholars I talk about above, has launched an interesting new blog focused around online fandom and designed to explore the intersection between fans and academics. Baym wrote one of the first and best studies of the ways that digital media was altering fan culture, Tune In, Log On: Soaps, Fandom, and Online Community (1999). She is a classic example of a scholar studying their own fandom and coming away with intimate knowledge that would be closed to many outside that community. For a more recent book that deals well with the question of online fandom, let me also recommend Rhiannon Bury's Cyberspaces of Their Own: Female Fandoms Online (a book that deals primarily with fans of Due South and The X Files).

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Monitoring Snakes on a Plane

I know a good many people who are reading this blog will be going to see Snakes on a Plane this weekend and that you are scattered in cities and towns around the globe. I would like to ask that you send me your observations about the film's reception by 9 pm est weds. night and I will compile them and post them to the blog. Some of the things we will be interested in hearing: When and where you saw the movie; what the attendence was like (packed, sparse, some place in between); memorable examples of interactions between the audience and the film; some sense of the tone of the audience response to the film; some clue as to why the people there came (this may be hard to gleam without talking to people but you can certainly listen to conversations around you, etc.); your own response to the movie. I see this as an experiment in whether we can use blogs to get a nationwide, perhaps world wide snapshot of the public's response to a film. Your notes don't have to be lengthy or sophisticated but your impressions may help us all to better understand the film's reception. Post your responses in the comments section here. (I will do my best to keep rescuing them from the evil Spam Catcher.)

Posted by Henry Jenkins at 7:56 AM | Permalink | Comments ()

Comics and Convergence Part One

This is the first of a series of outtakes -- passages written for Convergence Culture, but ultimately cut for reasons of length. Each represents a snap shot of convergence culture at work. Most of these sections were intended as side bars. Those of you who have read the book will know that it is structured around a series of core case studies that are developed in depth and sidebars which suggest other dimensionhs of the topic. Sidebars seemed like the most effective way of juxtaposing these other examples to the core discussion and seemed appropriate given the book's focus on the way we pull together information from multiple sources. What I like about the sidebars is that readers will engage with them at different points in the reading process as their own whims dictate and thus each reader's experience of the argument will be slightly different. Some will read them as they go; some will wait to the end of the chapter and then go back to read them, and so forth.

This section introduces comic books as a particularly rich site for understanding media change. As regular readers will note, I find comics a particularly interesting and relatively underexplored medium. Experiments in new approaches to popular storytelling often take place in comics -- the risks are relatively low both because of lowered cost of production and because of the fringe nature of their readership. At the same time, comics content is being drawn into the commercial mainstream. More and more recent films have been based on comics -- not simply predictible superhero fare such as X-Men, Batman Begins, or Spider-Man, but also off-beat independent films, such as American Splender, Ghost World, Road to Perdition, A History of Violence, and V for Vendetta, among others. I am a hardcore comics fan so you will be seeing lots of examples of trends from comics coming under my analytic gaze as this blog continues.

For those of you who own Convergence Culture, you can always print out these sections and tap them inside your book to assemble your own director's cut edition. :-) For the rest of you, these will give you a taste of the style and structure of the book.

Posted by Henry Jenkins at 12:00 AM | Permalink

City Blogging in Beirut

Part of the pleasure of starting this blog has been building closer contact with my existing students as I develop posts around some of their research and hearing back from former students who tip me about media developments in their part of the world. A little while ago, I got e-mail from a former undergraduate student Rania Khalaf. She had been a student in my Introduction to Media Studies class years ago and was reminded of the class by recent developments involving digital media in her native country of Lebanon.

In this case, I wanted to share with you the story in her own words and through the images being produced by artists in the Middle East but circulated around the world.

Here's what she wrote to me:

I have been thinking a lot about that class lately and was thinking you'd find the blogging about the Lebanese-Israeli war, especially by the art community, to be an interesting phenomenon... Now, the blogs are seeping onto the walls of cities.

Here's what happening: First, the usual first Web blogging is happening by people on both sides of the conflict. Well - since I'm Lebanese and my family's all there ... I'm a pretty stressed out - so I've mainly been following the blogs from/about lebanon. And now, as Paul Keller puts it, they're moving into the 'urban fabric' and becoming 'city blogs' .

A couple of these blogs that I like best are chronicling the war, not the politics of it but the day-to-day of it, using sketches. Maybe a few song lyrics. Maybe a few paragraphs of text. A song here and there, and one song using the falling bombs for bass.

There's even one that uses annotated pics of Arabic Superman comics .

Having grown up in the middle east and through one civil war, well .. let's just say political analysis of that region turns into wacky conspiracy theories and goes back thousands of years into a blame game that wastes precious time (and in turn, precious lives) .. making it so very sick that sometimes it makes me laugh a little filling the room with a nasty cynicisim .. So I tend to veer to the blogs that are about the human condition , about common sense, about staying alive and moving forward. Me, I'm still holding out for eternal peace and love and all that cheese.

Continue reading "City Blogging in Beirut" »

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What DOPA Means for Education

A little while ago, I got the following comments in an e-mail from one of the Comparative Media Studies graduate students Ravi Purushotma about the news that the Deleting Online Predators Act has now passed the U.S. House of Representatives:

Some of my friends commented on how bitter, angry and depressed I seemed when DOPA passed. It's really painful spending 5 years searching for a new paradigm by which this planet could communicate among itself, coming to an actual sense of what needs to happen, then the week before it culminates into a thesis it becomes illegal because some bonehead in Alaska has his neural tubes clogged.

For those of you who have not been following this story, there's some very good reporting by Wade Rough of Technology Review about the debate surrounding DOPA. The Senator from Alaska is question is Senator Ted Stevens who has been a major backer of this legislation and who seems to know very little about how digital media works.

This exchange came as I was signing off on Purushotma's outstanding thesis which centers on the ways that various forms of new media and popular culture could be used to enhance foreign language teaching and learning. His project got some attention a year or so back when the BBC picked up on a report he had done describing his efforts to modify The Sims to support the teaching of foreign languages. Essentially, the commercial games ship with all of the relevant language tracks on the disc and a simply code determines which language is displayed as they reach a particular national market. It is a pretty trivial matter to unlock the code for a different language and play the game in Spanish, German, or what have you. The game's content closely resembles the focus on domestic life found in most first or second year language textbooks -- with one exception. Most of us are apt to put in more time playing the game than we are to spending studying our textbooks or filling in our workbooks.

This is a very rich and interesting approach but it is only one of a number of ideas that Ravi proposes in his thesis. Ravi has done more research than anyone I know about into how teachers are using this technology now and what purposes it might serve in the future. He has prepared his thesis as a multimedia web document that mixes sound, video, and text in ways that really puts his ideas into practice.

There has been lots of discussion here and elsewhere about the potentially devastating effect of DOPA on the lives of young people -- especially those for whom schools and public libraries represent their only point of access onto the digital world. I have made the argument that if supporters of DOPA really wanted to protect young people from online predators, they would teach social networking in the classroom, modeling safe and responsible practices, rather than lock it outside the school and thus beyond the supervision of informed librarians and caring teachers. The advocates of the law have implied that MySpace is at best a distraction from legitimate research activities, at worst a threat to childhood innocence.

But Ravi's thesis suggests something more -- we are closing off powerful technologies that could be used effectively to engage young people with authentic materials and real world cultural processes. Here, social networking functions not as a media literacy skill but as a tool for engaging with traditional school subjects in a fresh new way.

Posted by Henry Jenkins at 12:00 AM | Permalink | Comments ()

Response to Bogost (Part Three)

When Ian Bogost wrote me earlier today to say that his response to the first installment hadn't appeared on my site, I was confused. I went back to my spam filter and discovered that more than 30 substantive comments to this site from a variety of sources had gone missing. I had been trying to be as inclusive as possible and make sure all of the reader's comments were posted, cutting out only obvious spam and purely personal invective. I feel really bad to discover so many of you fell prey to the spam catcher. Now that I know it is an issue, I will be checking regularly. I have now reposted everything that got blocked -- for archival purposes if nothing else. Sorry for the mixup. All I can say is that I am new at this.

Over the past two installments, I have been responding to Ian Bogost's thoughtful yet challenging review of my new book, Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide, over at Water Cooler Games. In part one, I addressed some issues surrounding the emotional dynamics of contemporary advertising. Last time, I addressed some questions around transmedia entertainment and fan culture. Today, I will wrap up with some thoughts on the commercialization of culture and the relationship between technology and culture, among other topics.

For those who might be interested in hearing me speak more about the ways convergence culture is impacting the games industry, check out my appearance on a podcast organized by the editors of The Escapist.

Noncommercial Media

Tthe omission of convergence communities that opt for more historically-entrenched creative practices in lieu of outright commercial commodities seems to reflect Jenkins's own preference for contemporary popular culture, and perhaps his own libertarian politics. The subversive undertones in Convergence Culture remain squarely on the side of mass market global capitalism. While Jenkins admits that many corporations are pushing convergence as a strategy of control, he frames consumer resistance as a struggle to get media companies to be more responsive to consumer tastes and interests.

Hmm. Where do I start? I see my book as describing a particular aspect of contemporary culture which has to do with the intersection between commercial and grassroots media. I am very clear from the start that no one can describe the full picture and that all I can offer are a limited number of snapshots of cultural change in practice. There is much about the culture which this book doesn't address, though I would hope that its insights help others to begin to explore these implications for their respected areas. I know that Mark Deuze, for example, has been applying some of these ideas to the study of news and journalism; I have myself done some writing lately about the implications of participatory culture for education and for participation in the arts; and so forth. I would have said that the book tries to show how trends in popular culture are relevent to the political process, to education, to religion, and to the military at various points along the way, which is more than what most books on popular entertainment have tried to do.

My own particular background as a scholar -- and my own particular interest as a fan -- lies in the area of popular culture. It doesn't mean I don't see value in other forms of cultural production. I do. But there are plenty of others in the academia who know those areas better, write about them more knowledgibly, and make better contributions to them. I find myself drawn to popular culture in part because it requires me to defend what some see as the indefensible and in the process, to try to complicate the easy hierarchies that too often operate within our culture.

Some of what my book doesn't discuss is addressed very well by Yochai Benkler's Wealth of Networks, a book that I really wish I could have read while I was writing my own book. He's making an argument that we need to discuss the present moment in terms of the shifting relationship between commercial, amateur, civic, and nonprofit sectors, each involved in the production and circulation of media, and each meeting each other on somewhat different terms because of the leveling influence of the web. Man, I wish I had said that. My book really focuses on the two extremes there -- the commercial on the one hand and the amateur on the other. I do think it could have said more about these other players in the middle -- various nonprofit groups, educational and cultural institutions, etc. and the role they play in reshaping the media landscape.

Posted by Henry Jenkins at 12:00 AM | Permalink | Comments ()

Response to Bogost (Part Two)

On Friday, I began the first of a three part response to Ian Bogost's thoughtful, engaging, and provocative review of my new book, Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide. Bogost's discussion of the book at Water Cooler Games allows me to respond to some anticipated challenges to the book's content and approach. It also seems that many of you are relishing a good debate in the dog days of the summer so far be it for me to deny you your entertainment. All of this will make more sense if you've read both the book and the review.

Last time, I mostly addressed some questions Bogost raised about the affective economics chapter of the book. Today, I take up some issues about transmedia storytelling/entertainment and about fan culture more generally.

Keep in mind two things: Bogost's review was primarily positive and I have enormous respect for Bogost's contribution to the game studies world. This is an intellectual debate, not a blood feud.

Ludology vs. Narratology

As the sonic boom of the so-called ludology vs. narratology debate dissipates, I find it interesting that Jenkins continues to insist on the terms "narrative" and "storytelling" as the principle units of cultural expression. Even though Jenkins admits that "storytelling has become the art of world building," where artists create environments and situations for a multitude of consumer intersections, he still does not reimagine such a craft separate from the particularity of narrative. Following Roger Shanck and others, Jenkins argues that "stories are basic to all human cultures, the primary means by which we structure, share, and make sense of our common experiences." Yet, the examples he cites, from the rich worlds of The Matrix, and Star Wars to transmedial experiments like Dawson's Desktop, readily elude the narrative frame, offering representations of behaviors, fragments, and environments. Michael Mateas and Gonzalo Frasca have called the privileging of narrative expression narrativism, and I have argued that narrativist gestures like Jenkins's occlude representational gestures based on logics and behaviors. Convergence Culture continues Jenkins' narrativist practice.

Given the propensity for such non-narrative interpretations of media properties, it is curious that Jenkins did not choose the more general term transmedia authorship over transmedia storytelling

My first response upon reading this was to gasp, "not again." The last thing any of us wants is to reopen the trumped up feud between the self-proclaimed ludologists and the so-called narratologists. The argument is, in my opinion, based on a false set of distinctions that are getting imposed on a hybrid medium at a highly transitional moment. (Anytime someone accuses you of "occluding" something, you know you are in trouble.) More seriously, I think the ludology/narratology debate was based on misidentifications across cultural and language differences. When Espen Aarseth and I sat down together a few years ago at the HumLab, we found that there was relatively little to debate. We were involved in disagreements in emphasis but not in a substantive dispute about the future of game studies.

Posted by Henry Jenkins at 12:00 AM | Permalink | Comments ()

A Response to Ian Bogost (Part One)

Ian Bogost wins the award for being first to market with a thorough, thoughtful critique of my new book, Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide.

The review is worth reading in its entirity because it really does set a high bar for debate and discussion around this book. Bogost does all of us a great service in taking on this task: the review is helpful to me in identifying some of the battlegrounds that are apt to emerge around this book. As I wrote to him, there are some points of real disagreement here, some points where we place different emphasis, and some points where we agree more than his summary of the book suggests. Some of his criticisms made me wince; some left me scratching my head. I wish I had read some of them before the book went to press.

It seems the most constructive thing one can do at this point is to respond to some of his questions publically in the hopes of getting a larger conversation going around the issues he raises. Because I wanted to respond fully to a range of interesting questions Bogost raised, I am going to be running my response over my next three posts.

I Can't Belive It's Margarine!

Bogost's review begins promisingly enough from my perspective with the following lines:

The book is a short, smart, buttery read on a hot topic, and it is sure to draw both popular and academic interest.

I cite this passage here -- other than my amusement over the buttery metaphor -- just to show that he really does seem to like the book. (Bless you, Ian, for calling the book "short." It has to be the first time in human history I haven't been accused of being long winded.) Hinceforth, I am going to generally ignore the many nice things he says about the book in order to address points of disagreement. I am not trying to pick a fight with Bogost, who I admire, simply trying to respond to the issues that seem most urgent here and I have told Bogost I am planning to do this. My hope is that I can coax him to respond to my response and keep the exchange going.

Posted by Henry Jenkins at 12:00 AM | Permalink | Comments ()

E3: End of an Era?

Those of us who follow the games industry have reacted with various degrees of shock and surprise by the announcement a few weeks ago that E3, the Electronic Entertainment Expo, the major trade show of the games industry, will no longer be held. As Next Generation has reported, several of the major companies whose support was key for funding an event on this scale had pulled their support from the event:

When I spoke to some people about E3's collapse, the general response was one of disbelief. How could something so big fall apart so quickly? Perhaps this is why so many news outlets simply refused to believe the news. The fact is that all it took were a very small number of company presidents to talk with each other, and figure out that if they all decided to pass, none of them would need to be there. Once Nintendo, Microsoft, SCEA and EA had stepped out, E3 was history. It was multilateral disarmament.

The Next Generation writer went on to identify a range of other factors that contributed to the collapse of this industry institution, including a sense that it had not achieved its goals in attracting media coverage to anything other than the violence issue or the release of new hardware as well as the degree to which other and better publicity mechanisms had emerged which made it possible for companies to maintain greater control over their messages and reach their intended audience at lower costs. The Next Generation coverage stressed the degree to which organizing for E3 had taken on a life of its own, often at the expense of other goals within the industry:

E3 isn't just measured in terms of the cost of the booth, the floor-space, the party, the hotel, the flights etc. There's also the incredible amount of effort that goes into preparing for the show. Marketing teams are focused on E3 for a good six months of the year. Developers are whipped along as they try to get games ready for what is, essentially, an artificial deadline. It could be argued that this adds focus to development as projects near their conclusion, or it could be argued that it's an unnecessary diversion and a big pain in the ass. Publishers that focus on company-specific events are not under so much pressure to compete with the rest of the market for column inches, months before the real battle of competing for consumer dollars.

Posted by Henry Jenkins at 2:00 AM | Permalink | Comments ()

ComicCon & The Power of the Devoted Niche

This is the third guest post written by Comparative Media Studies graduate student and media analyst Ivan Askwith about his observations at Comicon. Askwith is beginning work now on a thesis which centers around transmedia and participatory aspects of Lost and Veronica Mars.

In my second dispatch from ComicCon, I tried to illustrate how the studios and networks are already beginning to understand the importance of fan support in the era of convergence culture. And while some executives have a better grasp on the core principles than others, it's fair to say that the entertainment industry are starting to think more seriously about how fans power new business models.

Savvy executives, however, will also realize that ComicCon still has a lot to teach them about the significance of fan support, particularly in economic terms.

While recent entries both here and in the C3 Weblog tempt me to describe what I saw at ComicCon as a living illustration of Chris Anderson's Long Tail. After all, the merchandise selections available at ComicCon range from the super-mainstream to the ultra-obscure, which suggests that there is a market for even the most esoteric and specialized collectibles. If the exhibitors at the Con have chosen to use some of their floor space to offer less mainstream product, should we assume that they've embraced the "we can sell less-of-more" ideology? Most of these sellers have been attending the Con for years, which gives me ample reason to believe that if they didn't think they could sell off their more obscure inventory, they wouldn't bother bringing it.

For all of its strengths, however, I don't think the Long Tail is designed to explain the lesson that I would encourage the entertainment industry to take away from their time at ComicCon: that a small audience of super-committed fans can be worth more, in economic terms, than a massive audience of casual viewers and readers.

This isn't an entirely new observation, of course. Recent literature suggests that viewer involvement has a direct correlation to awareness and retention of advertising messages, and more networks are starting to see the merit of offering niche product through on-demand services.

At ComicCon, however, there is ample evidence to suggest that the industry still hasn't realized just how valuable these niche audiences can be. This became particularly clear during a brief conversation that I had with Allan Caplan, the founder of InkWorks, a company specializing in the creation of trading cards and collectibles tied to popular cult television programs. Their current lineup includes Lost, Veronica Mars, The 4400, and Naruto, as well as such discontinued shows as Buffy: The Vampire Slayer, Charmed, Firefly, Alias and The X-Files. InkWorks might not be operating on Anderson's Long Tail, but they benefit from a similar principle: that small audiences still have big purchasing power if you cater to their interests.

Case in point: InkWorks is preparing to release their seventh line of collectible cards for Buffy The Vampire Slayer, a show that has ended three years ago. One visitor, walking past the stand, asked: "How could there possibly still be a market for new content about a cancelled series?"

(In retrospect, this is an especially odd question to ask in a room where fans are ready and willing to pay well in excess of $1000 for an original out-of-print comic featuring their favorite character.)

Caplan's answer? That every line of Buffy cards InkWorks makes has sold out rapidly, and fans continue to ask them for more. The same is true of other cancelled series, especially Joss Whedon's post-Buffy endeavor, Firefly. Caplan told me that even he had been hesitant to invest in the development of Firefly-affiliated merchandise, until he saw that fans were willing to pay -- and pay well -- for anything connected to the show.

While trading cards aren't an especially new niche business, Inkworks has demonstrated a particularly keen understanding of the fan/collector mentality: in addition to the basic set of cards in each line, there are a number of "bonus cards" distributed at random through the line. The specific content of these cards varies from show to show, but generally includes "Autograph Cards," with actual signatures from cast members and "Pieceworks Cards," which contain tiny pieces of actual costumes worn on-screen during the show. (Other interesting show-specific offerings include invisible ink messages on select cards tied into the spy-fi show Alias, which can only be seen when the card is placed under a black light.)

For reference, a single pack of 6 trading cards costs $2.50.

While I didn't have the presence of mind to record my conversation with Caplan, it was clear to me that he understood (a) the power of creating limited quantities, and (b) that a small, engaged audience can be far more lucrative, especially to niche marketers, than a massive casual audience. After all, as he pointed out to me, there's no market for CSI: Miami trading cards, even if it is the number one show in the world.

One question worth considering: can collectible product lines like this be used as a barometer for the relative popularity of various franchises?

(At some point in the future, I'll be interviewing Caplan, and will post any interesting results that come from that discussion either here or in the C3 Weblog.)

Posted by Henry Jenkins at 12:00 AM | Permalink | Comments ()

Building Popular Buzz: What To Do, What Not To Do

This is the second of a series of guest blogs written by Comparative Media Studies graduate student and media analyst Ivan Askwith about his observations at this year's Comicon.

Based on the evidence from this year's ComicCon, the entertainment industry is slowly starting to understand just how important a vocal fandom can be in the success of a new brand or franchise. As I indicated at the end of my last post, this growing comprehension is most evident in the largest "panel events" -- on the ComicCon schedule, this generally means those events held in Ballroom 20, Hall 6CDEF, and Hall H, which can seat anywhere from 2000-6500 spectators. Or, as the industry is learning to think of them, potential advertisers and advocates. Some presentations were more overt than others, but almost all of the largest scheduled events were closer in tone to a high-powered sales pitch than an intimate discussion between fans and creators.

That said, some presenters seem to have a more nuanced understanding of fan behavior than others. As Henry has already discussed on this blog, no one is currently cultivating fan participation more effectively, or respectfully, than New Line Cinema, in promotion for Snakes on a Plane. The panel for SoaP came at the end of a longer presentation from New Line, which featured previews of the Final Destination 3 DVD -- interesting insofar as it leverages the rarely-used interactive capabilities of DVD systems to let viewers determine the course of events at pivotal moments -- and the forthcoming Jack Black film, Tenacious D in 'The Pick of Destiny'. But the audience and presenters both knew that these were diversions from the main attraction: as the discussion about Tenacious D wrapped up, the energy in the crowd became palpable, and when panel host Kenan Thompson finally spoke the words -- "Snakes On A Plane" -- the audience erupted with enthusiasm and applause.

The entire presentation that followed demonstrated the same respectful appreciation of the internet fandom that has characterized the film's marketing campaign over the last several months. The presentation began with a video which flashed the words "Thanks to you.... Snakes on a Plane.... is already the summer's most talked about movie.... and it's not even out yet." This was followed with a several-minute montage collecting some of the best fan-generated content (spoofs, advertisements, posters, images, viral memes, etc), and used the winning entry from a fan-generated-soundtrack contest as the musical track. The video ended with another sequence of titles, which declared "Thanks to you, Snakes on a Plane is one of the most anticipated movies.... ever."

Posted by Henry Jenkins at 12:00 AM | Permalink

Comic Book Foreign Policy? Part Four

This is the final installment (at least for the time being) of a series I have been doing about how the comic book world has responded to September 11 and the politics of Homeland Security. I wrote it in response to several recent essays that have offered somewhat stereotypical versions of how comic book superheroes relate to the current policies of the Bush administration. I wanted to show that comic books have, in general, avoided jingoism in favor of a more thoughtful engagement with the ways what happen at the World Trade Center have changed the society we live in.

In Part Three, I discussed three contemporary comic books -- DMZ (published by DC's Vertigo imprint), Ex Machina (published by Wildstorm) and Squadron Supreme (published by Marvel) -- which suggest the lasting impact of September 11 on comics culture. The three books take somewhat different strategies for dealing with the current political landscape-- DMZ is speculative fiction about a future American Civil War that results in part from over-extending U.S. military presence overseas; Ex Machina offers us a political drama where the Mayor of New York City happens to be a superhero; and Squadron Supreme represents a team of superheroes whose pursuit of American foreign policy objectives pose a series of ethical concerns.

What these three books have in common is a refusal to offer easy answers or paint black and white pictures. All three suggest that there are multiple sides for any issue and try to constantly force readers to rethink our own assumptions. These books are hard to classify in left or right terms -- they are certainly critical of many aspects of current policies, especially those that involve violations of civil liberties, but then, only about 30 something percent of the American public might be described as enthusiastic about those policies on any given week. A large number of libertarians and traditional conservatives are raising serious concern about our current Homeland Security policies along similar lines. Each of these books tap the genre conventions of popular culture but use them to focus attention on crucial social and political concerns.

Near the end of Convergence Culture, I speculate that popular culture may provide a common ground for us to explore important policy issue precisely because we are often willing to suspend fixed ideological categories in order to explore its fantasies; because we don't define our relationship to popular culture exclusively or primarily in partisan terms; because it offers a shared set of metaphors to talk about things that matter to us; and because it brings together a community that cuts across party lines. As Barrack Obama might have said, we watch West Wing in the red states and we watch 24 in the blue states, and if we can talk together as fans, maybe we can rebuild a basis for communications on other levels. In this context, popular culture has a vital role to play as civic media. As a comics fan, I am proud to see the comics industry rise to the occasion perhaps better than any other entertainment medium (well, excluding the fine work going on over at Comedy Central.)

That's why I am so excited about Marvel's Civil War project this summer.

Posted by Henry Jenkins at 12:00 AM | Permalink | Comments ()

Comic Book Foreign Policy? Part Three

Sorry for the wait, oh loyal readers of this here blog. But today, I am finally able to sit down and plow out the third installment of my series about how the comic book world has responded to 9/11 and the on-going War on Terror.

Some of you will know that this was inspired by Michael Dean's "The New Patriotism" which was serialized in recent issues of Comics Journal and argued that comics were "circling the wagons" in response to the perceived threat to national security. As Dean puts it, "Now, some 60 years after the height of WWII and some 30 years after the end of the Vietnam War, mainstream comics seem to be making tentative gestures toward recreating the glory days of the wartime propaganda comic."

His primary exhibits are Freedom Time Three and Cobb (both from minor publishers), Marvel's Combat Zone: True Tales of GIs in Iraq, and reports that Frank Miller may be doing a Batman vs. Bin Laden book. What Dean has to say about the politics behind these particular projects is fascinating, including some interesting quotes by Cobb's Beau Smith about the politics of comics publishing today:

Like film and TV most think that since it [comics] is a creative community and business that it favors a liberal stance. Creativity has always been closely tied to a liberal base...even taken for granted. That's a mistake. That is what has kept comics in this sales slump for so many years. Most publishers in comics, like movie studios, haven't really cared or taken the time to find out who their consumers really are....I think the less liberal factor is the big silent majority of the comic-book-reading public. I think they are well aware of what is going on in the world and in Iraq. I think they would love to have an escape area where there are solid good guys defeating bad guys. I think people want that outlet to release the steam that has built up since 9/11.

But, I question whether these particular projects -- most of which are published by marginal presses and will never get into most American comics shops -- are somehow representative of a general ideological perspective within the comics industry. In fact, I have been surprised at how few comics have shown us superheroes bopping terrorists and how many of them have encouraged a deep reflection on the nature and ethics of power in the world post-911.

Over the past two installments, I traced the immediate aftermath of September 11 and the varied ways that comics took up the challenge of responding to these events. Today, I want to bring this discussion into the present moment by looking at four books I have been reading this summer (well, really, four storylines) that speak directly to the political upheaval in this country surrounding the Iraq War and issues of Homeland Security: DMZ, Ex Machina, Supreme Squadron, and Marvel's Civil War storyline.

In focusing on these books, I skip over a broader array of representations of the current debates that also might seem very relevant to this discussion, such as Rick Veith's Can't Get No (which I haven't gotten any of yet), Joe Sacco's various projects in using comics to report on life in the middle east, Ted Rall's book on his trip to Afghanistan, cultural theorist Douglas Rushkoff's strange fusion of politics and religion in Testament or Art Spigelman's In the Shadows of No Towers which used imagery for early comic strips to reflect on his own conflicting feelings at 9/11.

Part of what I want to suggest here is that individually, comic book writers and artists -- both mainstream and niche -- have used their work to encourage their readers to ask hard questions about contemporary society and that collectively, they have provided a more diverse range of perspectives on these issues than can be found within the mainstream media.

Posted by Henry Jenkins at 12:00 AM | Permalink | Comments ()

Four Ways to Kill MySpace....

It's been a bad week -- make that, a really really bad few weeks -- for MySpace, for supporters of participatory culture, indeed for anyone who cares about civil liberties. MySpace is being hit on all sides and it remains to be seen which -- if any -- of these blows do lasting damage to its status as an important social networking site.

1. The Dopes in Washington:
By now, most of you who read this blog will have heard that the U.S. House of Representatives has passed Deleting Online Predators Act (DOPA) by an overwhelming 410-15 majority last week and the aptly named law now moves to the U.S. Senate, where it is also expected to pass. A growing number of Library and civil liberty organizations have come out in opposition to the law. Here's what the President of the American Library Association Leslie Burger had to say about the legislation:

This unnecessary and overly broad legislation will hinder students' ability to engage in distance learning and block library computer users from accessing a wide array of essential Internet applications including instant messaging, email, wikis and blogs....Under DOPA, people who use library and school computers as their primary conduits to the Internet will be unfairly blocked from accessing some of the web's most powerful emerging technologies and learning applications. As libraries are already required to block content that is "harmful to minors" under the Children's Internet Protection Act (CIPA), DOPA is redundant and unnecessary legislation."

danah boyd and I co-authored a public statement describing some of the reasons why we think this is a really bad piece of legislation earlier this summer. It's hard to know what more I can tell you now that I didn't say then. So if you haven't read our statement, take time to read it. Go ahead -- we'll wait for you to catch up.

Keep in mind that I believe the following: Statistically speaking, children are more at risk from sexual predators at a church picnic or Boy Scout camping trip than they are when they go onto MySpace. The greatest risk of sexual abuse comes from people the kid already knows -- a family member or someone who the family knows and trusts and not from a total stranger. Social network sites are important vehicles for youth community life -- offering a way for kids at risk, kids who are socially isolated, to connect with a larger community which shares their same interests.

MySpace has emerged as an important site for youth activisim -- having played an important role in rallying young people during recent protests about immigration issues, for example.

Or consider the following. Social networking skills are key competencies which are going to be increasingly central to the professional life of adults. We want to make sure that every kid in America acquires these skills. The DOPA would have two consequences: it would actively discourage teachers from incorporating such software and the skills related to them into their pedagogy (even though a growing number of educators are using such tools in meaningful and responsible ways) and it would lock out low income kids from whom schools and public libraries are their only point of access to the online world, further exaggerating the gap between the digital haves and have nots.

But, ignore all of that. Let's for the moment imagine that we think MySpace is a really dangerous place where kids are at risk. Wouldn't you think young people would be safer if teachers and librarians taught them about the responsible use of this technology and offered them some minimal supervision and advice rather than locking the door and leaving kids to confront social network sites on their own. I ask you: Is this really about "protecting" kids from risk or is there something else at stake here for the promoters of this bill?

Of course, all of this assumes that the legislators who passed this bill have a clue what a social networking site is or how it is used other than having heard from some sensationalistic news report that blocking MySpace will look like they are doing something to protect young people from sexual predators.

This isn't a liberal/conservative, red-state/blue-state kind of issue, people. What's at stake here is a fundamental question of free association and expression which should concern every American citizen. For this bill to have passed by such a large margin of votes, it has to have had the support of a significant number of Liberal Democrats who want to take the Joseph Lieberman-Hillary Clinton route -- trying to appease their social and cultural conservative constituents by going after what they see as low hanging fruit. They can take away the rights of young people to assemble in cyberspace because young people aren't likely to vote in the next election.

All I can say is that on an average day, this site gets well over a thousand readers. If each of you who lived in the United States took ten minutes to e-mail your Senators and tell them that you vote and you care about DOPA, it could make a difference.

Posted by Henry Jenkins at 12:00 AM | Permalink | Comments ()

National Politics within Virtual Game Worlds: The Case of China

Last month, what some are describing as "the largest political protest gathering in a virtual world game ever" occurred within the Chinese Massively Multiplayer Game, Fantasy Westward Journey (FWJ). Comparative Media Studies alum Zhan Li has been working with me over the past several weeks to piece together some sense of what occurred and what it means. Please keep in mind as you read this that the incident concerned the still heated relationship between Japan and China. Some of the language qouted from participants may be offensive but it is qouted to help readers understand more fully the issues at stake for participants in this debate.

NetEase and FWJ
FWJ is currently the most popular MMORPG in the People's Republic of China. The game is heavily influenced by classical Chinese literature and history. The name is a direct reference to Journey to the West or Westward Journey (perhaps best known for its famous central character, The Monkey King). FWJ has over 25mm registered player accounts and a peak concurrent user count of up to 1.3mm players during first quarter 2006 with an average concurrent user count of about 458,000 players. FWJ is operated by NetEase, one of the big three Chinese companies which represent 70% of the People's Republic of China market. NetEase founder, William Ding, is a billionaire and third wealthiest person in PRC. Of the major games companies in the country, NetEase has the strongest emphasis on developing original games with Chinese culture themes (such as FWJ) in contrast to the other big 2 companies (Shanda and The9) which are more dependent on licensing foreign - especially Korean - games. NetEase operates the two leading MMORPGs in China - FWJ and a Korean license (Westward Journey Online - similar themes to FWJ). NetEase also has the most significant in-house development capability.

The Incident
The incident started on July 4 when the game's administrators placed a high level player (level 144, only 11 levels away from maximum) with an anti-Japanese name ("Kill the little Japs") in an in-game virtual jail. They ask him to change his name as it is too politically sensitive and he refused. As he explained in a public statement:

I began playing this game two years ago. When I first applied to Netease, you did not say that my alias was unacceptable! But now you come and lock up my ID. This is obviously depriving me of my private assets. Over these two years, I have spent more than 30,000 RMB on game point cards, and I have also spent more than 10,000 RMB on equipment trading.

The following day, admins announced that the guild ("The Alliance To Resist Japan") founded by the player - with 700 members, one of the top 5 in the game - would be dissolved by July 10. Netease offered the following explanation of its actions:

Although the names of individuals, guilds, stalls, shops, pets and beasts may be chosen as you wish, Netease is running a healthy and green game. In order to maintain the purity and harmony in the game world, Netease will not permit any names that include (but this list is not restricted solely to) those that attack, insult or mislead with respect to race, nationality, national politics, national leaders, obscenity, vulgarity, libel, threat, religions and religious figures.... In changing the name of an individual player or handling the case of an individual guild, we do not want to cause any unhappiness to people. We do not want such an incident to affect the patriotism of everybody. But this is a game. When we operate this game, we follow the state's regulations on Internet administration and we are monitored by the National Internet Supervisory Bureau. People come here to experience joy, and we therefore emphasize health, relaxation and happiness and we should not bring in politically sensitive topics. The experience of history tells us that patriotism should be expressed rationally under the grand theme of protecting the interests of the nation and the people. Patriotism requires passion, but it requires rationality even more so. Passion and rationality form our correct way of expressing our patriotism.

Link

Posted by Henry Jenkins at 12:00 AM | Permalink | Comments ()

Ivan Went to Comicon and All I Got Was This Lousy Photograph of T-Shirts

The title says it all. I've been wanting to go to Comicon for years now but once again, I didn't get to go. I sent Comparative Media Studies graduate student Ivan Askwith to be my eyes and ears at this event. This is the first of an unspecified number of blog posts he's writing about his experiences there.

Here's what he had to report:

Since this was the first year that I've been able to attend ComicCon, I have no strong basis of comparison to describe how the event has changed over time.

From the "Copy Points" briefing I was given at the press registration table, I can tell you that:

- This year marked the 37th annual ComicCon
- ComicCon is the largest comic book and pop culture event in North America
- ComicCon 2006 featured over 600 hours of programming and discussion panels.
- The first ComicCon drew together 300 attendees in the basement of a San Diego hotel.
- The 2005 ComicCon drew about 104,000 attendees.
- The largest presentation hall is a converted exhibit hall which seats 6,500 people.

Since I was attending on Henry's behalf, however, I was interested in seeing how ComicCon might illustrate some of the themes and trends addressed in the forthcoming Convergence Culture. As anyone who has been to ComicCon could tell you, I wasn't disappointed: over three days, I spent more than 40 hours talking with fans, attending panel discussions and content previews, browsing a massive hall packed with more collectible merchandise than I could have imagined, and chatting with reps from some of the most popular exhibition booths.

Trade press estimates suggest that more than 140,000 people attended this year's Con.

So after three exhausting days, and almost a week to reflect and recuperate, let me share a few of my most significant observations and conclusions from attending the San Diego ComicCon.

Posted by Henry Jenkins at 12:00 AM | Permalink