Fans, Bloggers, and Gamers: Exploring Participatory Culture - Hardcover

Jenkins, Henry

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 081474284X ISBN 13: 9780814742846

Publisher: NYU Press, 2006

Synopsis

Henry Jenkins at Authors@Google (video)

Henry Jenkins“s pioneering work in the early 1990s promoted the idea that fans are among the most active, creative, critically engaged, and socially connected consumers of popular culture and that they represent the vanguard of a new relationship with mass media. Though marginal and largely invisible to the general public at the time, today, media producers and advertisers, not to mention researchers and fans, take for granted the idea that the success of a media franchise depends on fan investments and participation.

Bringing together the highlights of a decade and a half of groundbreaking research into the cultural life of media consumers, Fans, Bloggers, and Gamers takes readers from Jenkins's progressive early work defending fan culture against those who would marginalize or stigmatize it, through to his more recent work, combating moral panic and defending Goths and gamers in the wake of the Columbine shootings. Starting with an interview on the current state of fan studies, this volume maps the core theoretical and methodological issues in Fan Studies. It goes on to chart the growth of participatory culture on the web, take up blogging as perhaps the most powerful illustration of how consumer participation impacts mainstream media, and debate the public policy implications surrounding participation and intellectual property.

About this title

About the Author

Henry Jenkins is the Provost’s Professor of Communication, Journalism, Cinematic Arts and Education at the University of Southern California.

Review

“Jenkins is one of us: a geek, a fan, a popcult packrat. He's also an incisive and unflinching critic. His affection for the subject and sharp eye for 'what it all means' are an unbeatable combination. This is fascinating, engrossing and enlightening reading.”
-Cory Doctorow,author of Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town and co-editor of Boing Boing

“Jenkins persuasively argues in favor of taking the fan’s perspective in analyzing television-- and this is the cornerstone of the new turn in Cultural Studies.”
-Claremont Review of Books

Edition details

• Publisher: NYU Press
• Publication date: 2006
• ISBN 10: 081474284X
• ISBN 13: 9780814742846
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 279