Jenkins Convergence Culture Analysis

The evolution of television content is currently steadily moving towards reality television shows. The shift from interest in fiction drama series to reality shows has turned the regular television viewers into addicted voyeurs. There have been diverse views on the effect of reality television shows ranging from support to criticism. George Will, in his article “Reality television: oxymoron” believes that reality television is making ordinary people degenerate morally and act stupid in the effort to please a disinterested audience. Reality TV shows are relying heavily on building extraordinary characters or events out of the norm and attract the attention of the audience. Kellner argues that the audience is enticed by “media constructs

Throughout the twenty first century, technology is continuously being developed and constantly being advanced. The advancement of technological goods makes pop culture easily exposed and available to most individuals in our society. Although expanding information in mass amounts

In Cassie Heidecker’s paper, The Real, the Bad, and the Ugly, she exposes that reality television’s charm is the characters have real, normal lives like the audience’s lives. While the producers’ editing causes regular episodes of reality TV shows to differ from a viewer's normal life, it also generates larger audiences with every episode and the ratings continue to rise. Moreover, the shows follow a predictable formula so that even Heidecker, who regularly watches reality TV, realizes the shows are predictable; yet Heidecker continues to laugh, cry, and enjoy the predictable moves the shows make. Since the ratings of reality TV continue to rise, more people than just Heidecker still enjoy the shows, even though they are predictable. Though the shows are

In “Worship At The Altar of Convergence”, Henry Jenkins discusses the concept of convergence, where both old and new media collide. Jenkins describes convergence as the flow of content between multiple media platforms, industries, and the migratory behaviour that is present throughout the media audience (2). He explains that convergence is a necessity because it describes technological, industrial, cultural and social changes that are present in our technological society. That being said, Jenkins analyzes the relation between media convergence, participatory culture, and collective intelligence.

In 2007, Netflix, an online video rental service founded in the late 1990s, changed courses and began to offer a video on demand streaming service that, though not the first of its kind, profoundly altered the way in which viewers watch and categorize televisual texts in the Post-Network Era of streaming and individualization of television viewing. This influence warrants a reconfiguration of Raymond Williams’ classic theory of flow as well as of Ethan Thompson’s more recent theory, which makes necessary advances by correctly accounting for a shift toward catering to audience tastes, but fails to address the particularities of the streaming platform. This essay argues that what I call “streaming flow”, still encourages continual viewing, but

Boasting more than thirty seasons and fifteen years of broadcasting, Survivor continues to reign supreme over the reality television genre. Even skeptics of this genre can admit that Survivor is a massive standout in a heap of inadequate television shows. In this current era of oversaturation in the television world, it is Survivor’s complex premise, controversial drama and competitive nature that elevate it above the rest.

John Jurgensen’s article asks us an interesting question: how many TV series can our brains take? As television series expand to grandiose levels, it gets harder to follow what is happening: who people are, and what their place in the overall story is hard to follow for a large number of viewers. Jurgensen attempts to address this within his article, and it has some interesting points.

Do you know the guiltiest pleasure of the American public? Two simple words reveal all—reality TV. This new segment of the TV industry began with pioneering shows like MTV’s The Real World and CBS’s Survivor. Switch on primetime television nowadays, and you will become bombarded by and addicted to numerous shows all based on “real” life. There are the heartwarming tales of childbirth on TLC, melodramas of second-rate celebrities on Celebrity Mole, and a look into a completely dysfunctional family on The Osbornes. Yet, out of all these entertaining reality shows arises the newest low for popular culture, a program based on the idea of a rich man or woman in search of

The article “Dumb TV,” published in the University of Regina Carillon on February 8, 2014, is a critique of the ABC reality TV show The Bachelor and The Bachelorette, produced and directed by Mike Fleiss (The Bachelor - ABC, 2016). Written in an informal style, Destiny Kaus’s article provides data to support her thesis that states, “Overall, I really do think these shows are exceedingly dumb and they shouldn’t exist because the process doesn’t work.” In the article, she presents her bias by arguing that these drama-filled shows, where men and women compete for love and matrimony, are “dumb” and ultimately fail at providing everlasting love. The informality of the article creates a connection with the audience, but the excessive use of the word “dumb” distracts the reader from the actual brilliance of The Bachelor and The Bachelorette franchise. More important, this article is fundamentally flawed as it only references the simple analysis of these shows as a meaningless search for love instead of the tactical attack of capitalism by the television industry. Are The Bachelor and The Bachelorette actually “dumb” or are they a brilliant attack on people’s emotions for the benefit of a television franchise?

Reality Television is a genre of television programming that documents unscripted situations and actual occurrences. The genre often highlights personal drama and conflict between characters to a much greater extent than other genres. (Lyle, 2008)The paper seeks to analyze the codes and conventions of authenticity used in the TV show American Choppers based in Orange County, New York. This reality-based TV show outlines the lives of Paul Teutul Sr., his son Paul Jr., makers of the universe 's most magnificent, one-off a kind custom chopper built around a specific theme (Mazzarella, 2008). Every scene catches the daily dramatization of this impulsive relationship the father and his son has, who are also a team as they fight impossible due

The line between television and the Internet seems to be growing more and more blurred as networks and producers learn to adapt to using online media to grow and capture new audiences. A recent article, “Chris Hardwick, King of the Nerds Is Expanding His Empire” by Lorne Manly in the New York Times features a profile of entertainer Chris Hardwick, who is described as the “model of an entertainment brand for a multiscreen generation” (Manly, par. 5). As a fan of both Chris Hardwick and of geek culture, I found this article to be a fascinating profile of how savvy use of media can allow performers to reach a much wider audience than television alone.

Darrin Brown, Sharon Lauricella, Aziz Douai and Arshia Zaidi composed a study focusing on the uses and grats of the aforementioned genre as a means of better understanding the relationship between television and its audiences (Brown, Lauricella, Douai, Zaidi, 2000). Blumber and Katz’s theory on uses and gratifications suggest that audience’s choose to watch certain programs as it satisfies a particular need; in other words, people use a program to gratify or please themselves (Who Watches Crime Dramas and Why?, 2012). They identified four main uses and grats: entertainment and diversion, where there is an idea of escapism; surveillance and information, where people have an urge to become more knowledgeable in a particular area; personal identity, where there is a comparison between the characters and audience members; and finally, personal companionship, where audience’s become involved with characters as if they were real (Who Watches Crime Dramas and Why?, 2012). The uses and Gratification theory assumes that audiences use mass media as an outlet for satisfying certain needs and desires (Brown, et. al, 2000). According to another group of scholars, the gratification individuals get when using such media are both social and psychological in nature (Brown, et. al, 2000). In

The difference between the intended meaning of media texts and what the audience actually perceives can be shockingly different. Producers of media can do everything possible to force audiences to experience their work in the way they want them to, but in the end they still take away many different meanings even within the same audience. Stuart Hall outlines this in his encoding and decoding model. One of the most apparent examples of this is the television show South Park. The television show South Park is a media text with the producers’ preferred meaning of being decoded as joke or as being satire, but many audience members take an oppositional stance of taking it seriously. This is clear from the examples of controversy when South Park aired episodes focused on Scientology, red-headed people, and Islam. Through these examples it is demonstrated that the producers of media have less power compared to the audience in determining the meaning of media.

There was a war between Great Britain and America that ended a long time ago. Today these two cultures use this historical event as an excuse to argue about two shows on MTV. When the time a person floating the enormous database of Internet, it is often seen particular situations between ‘historical’ emotions still hits up the conversation. The hatred still causes an emotional war between people from two countries. This time, it takes on the two shows: ‘Jersey Shore’ Vs. ‘Geordie Shore’, a spin-off shows for British TV show series. The fans of this “new shows” emphasizes each other is the “better” show series. However, the basic story line and a concept for both shows are practically the same. The interesting factor about this unethical fight between two shows often calls for a debate. This mass communication currently going on can connect to few ethical theories, sub-theories, and application of semiotic models. Whether people like either show, these two reality shows are causing a mass of controversy between two different cultures.

But today, we are exploiting the power of our words. The words we now propagate are riddled with infectious diseases. Upon us now, is the black plague of the 21st century, reality television.