Media Convergence: Power, Consumers, and Cultural Production

Media Convergence as Paradox

In The Cultural Logic of Media Convergence, Henry Jenkins describes two "seemingly contradictory" trends in American media (33). Those trends include new media democratization and consumer empowerment on one hand, and corporate conglomeration of mainstream media on the other. Another way of framing this dichotomous trend is in reference to excess fragmentation versus excess homogenization. Jenkins also points out that convergence is not an "endpoint" but a process that reflects how consumers interact with technology, with information, and with each other.

The convergence of media is dependent on and akin to a convergence of technology, in which one device serves multiple functions. The smartphone is the quintessential example of the converged media device. In some ways, media convergence signals the emergence of a collective mind in which knowledge is combined, shared, collaboratively created, and potentially beneficial to all stakeholders. On the other hand, corporate conglomerates and governments retain too much control over media to enable a truly free bottom-up process of liberalization. The appropriation of blogging by corporate media conglomerates is the ultimate symbol of the "new vision of media politics" that Jenkins describes (37).

Within this new vision, both consumers and corporate stakeholders have specific needs, goals, and responsibilities. When these needs, goals, and responsibilities converge, the result can be the best of both worlds rather than a continual struggle for dominance and power. Jenkins embraces a new era of cultural production in which power is distributed more wisely and equitably through a process of self-empowerment and collective social action.

Jenkins' Vision for Producer-Consumer Harmony

If a harmonic convergence between producers and consumers is to occur, Jenkins suggests nine key points. These include revising audience measurement via modes like fan communities, regulating media content via "narrowcasting" or placing the onus on consumers for choosing their own content, and redesigning the digital economy using "micropayment" models instead of the traditional model in which a large entity serves as a gateway to content. Cutting out the middleman will create a more judicious value system of content, in which content creators are paid and consumers have the power to choose their content.

In a new era of cultural production, emerging artists can participate in discourse and discourse is not necessarily mediated by commercial interests. As art becomes re-valued in this way, popular culture itself changes. Moreover, the empowerment of the artist reflects a new incarnation of Marxist values within the postmodern framework. Rather than disenfranchise the artist through the capitalist labor model in which labor is artificially valued and the artist is distanced from the means of production, in Jenkins' new model, the artist does own the means of production. The artist is no longer separate or alienated from one's own product (Harvey 103).

Among Jenkins's suggestions for harmonizing the needs of producers and consumers is restricting media ownership at the level of legislation and public policy. This is likely to be one of the more controversial of Jenkins's measures because it represents the most direct appeal to government intervention. However, at some level, consumers intuitively understand that their elected officials should be empowered to make decisions regarding media conglomeration rather than enable the plutocratic system that has emerged. Harvey would point out, however, that American democracy is far from being ideal and that the state is "a coercive system of authority that has a monopoly over institutionalized violence" (108). The state does in fact capitalize on new media in order to represent itself in ways that make it appear relevant or benevolent, representing the "aesthetization of politics" (Harvey 108). Consumer empowerment is the only means by which to mitigate both corporate and state control and create a more harmonizing balance of power.

Jenkins also suggests reexamining media aesthetics to allow greater creative expression and reduce the formulaic predictability of popular culture. More pessimistic critics of popular culture like Horkheimer and Adorno would strongly disagree, as they locate only "sameness," homogenization, and monopolization (41). According to Horkheimer and Adorno, there is only "trash," because the generation of culture is a completely commercial enterprise (42). They likewise do not recognize any salvific power in the postmodern re-ownership and ironic capitalization on popular culture by its subversives. Rather, there is only a "cycle of manipulation and retroactive need," and power remains concentrated in the hands of "those whose economic position in society is strongest" (42).

Jenkins urges a shift away from pessimism and cynicism and envisions a new relationship between consumer and producer that can simultaneously support and subvert capitalism. The subversion occurs at the level of politics: the empowerment of the individual, which allows for the reversion of ownership of means of production and the reconnection of worker to product. This would play out in scenarios in which technical workers, creative managers, and marketing personnel are all part of a team working together to collectively create and disseminate media (78). Even if there is a distinction between primary creative personnel and the executive of some media company, the end result will be a transformation of their relationships so that hierarchy and power systems are dismantled and made egalitarian in nature.

Intellectual Property and the Politics of Creativity

Jenkins discusses the important topic of redefining intellectual property rights in nuanced and meaningful ways. Renegotiating relations between producers and consumers follows naturally from redefining intellectual property, especially when it comes to corporate ownership of rights rather than artist ownership of rights. While perhaps not reverting to the medieval vision of patronage and the artisan in all cases, these trends have been emerging in "hipster" culture, which seeks often to ironically subvert capitalism via free market enterprise (66). Intellectual property rights occupy a curious place at the intersection of power and the commodification of the arts.

On one hand, intellectual copyright counterbalances the democratization of information represented by the most idealistic incarnation of the Internet. All information is to be shared and collectively enjoyed. On the other hand, the capital wound up in intellectual copyright could perhaps enable artists to gain a foothold over the gatekeepers and barriers to their empowerment: the capitalist owners of the means of production. The postmodern vision, and one that Jenkins would espouse, is a shift in understanding of how media is produced and disseminated. Rather than viewing creativity as a limited font, creativity can be reframed as a continual unfolding. Ideas are not "property" to be owned and possessed; the fact that intellectual "property" is called that calls into question the validity of intellectual property itself.

Shared values and communalism must, however, converge with the basic needs for individuality and privacy. This tension between collective ownership and individual rights remains a fundamental challenge to any radical restructuring of how cultural products are valued and distributed. The ideal of shared creative commons runs up against practical needs for artists to sustain themselves and for creators to receive recognition and compensation for their work.