Perhaps you will remember that on 20 July 2006 I posted a call for papers for a special issue of the journal Convergence that MIT's Henry Jenkins and I would be guest co-editing on the topic of convergence culture, based on his book of the same title, and as a theme running throughout my recent book on how convergence culture affects media work.Well, the special issue is out now (February 2008), and we're very excited about the stellar authors and papers in the issue. Indeed, we received many more excellent submissions than we had room for in this issue, many of which papers will appear in forthcoming issues of the journal.
Of course, this being academic publishing, all the content is hidden behind lock and key - something that one of the authors in our issue, danah boyd, justifiably takes issue with. Indeed, danah calls for a boycott of academic journals that "lock down" their content.
Another author in our issue, Christy Dena, has been cool enough to build a special site around the special issue, including a version of her contribution - a piece on Alternate Reality Games.
Of course, if you are looking for one or more of the pieces in this special issue and your library does not have print or electronic access to the journal, do not hesitate to contact me (mdeuze at indiana dot edu). To provide a bit of context for the issue, here are the opening paragraphs of our introductory essay on convergence culture.
Introduction to: Special Issue on Convergence Culture
by Henry Jenkins and Mark Deuze
"We are living at a moment of profound and prolonged media transition: the old scripts by which media industries operated or consumers absorbed media content are being rewritten. As those changes occur, we need to work across the historic divide in academic research between work on media industries and work on media audiences. Media companies can no longer be meaningfully studied in the absence of an understanding of how they relate to their consumers. By the same token, consumers, audiences, fan communities, users, call them what you wish, can no longer be meaningfully understood without a better understanding of the economic and technological contexts within which they operate. The essays contained within this special issue of Convergence, each in its own way, represents a raproachment between industry studies and audience research.
In this context, media can be seen as the key drivers and accelerators of a growing integration between culture and commerce. Brought down to first principles, media mediate – between people, communities, organizations, institutions, and industries. In the classic model, a small number of media companies were homogenizing culture through their dominance over the means of production and distribution of media content. And individuals were defined through their roles as "consumers" rather than being seen as producers of -- or better yet, participants within -- the surrounding culture. Over the past several decades, the expansion of new media resources has led to what Yochai Benkler has described as a "hybrid media ecology" within which commercial, amateur, governmental, nonprofit, educational, activist and other players interact with each other in ever more complex ways. Each of these groups has the power to produce and distribute content and each of these groups are being transformed by their new power and responsibilities in this emerging media ecology. And in the process, the focus on individual consumers is giving way to a new emphasis on the social networks through which production and consumption occurs. In this context, it may no longer be of value to talk about personalized media; perhaps, we might better discuss socialized media. We might see YouTube, Second Life, Wikipedia, Flickr, and MySpace, to cite just a few examples, as meeting spaces between a range of grassroots creative communities, each pursuing their own goals, but each helping to shape the total media environment.
These shifts in the communication infrastructure bring about contradictory pulls and tugs within our culture. On the one hand, this "democratization" of media use signals a broadening of opportunities for individuals and grassroots communities to tell stories and access stories others are telling, to present arguments and listen to arguments made elsewhere, to share information and learn more about the world from a multitude of other perspectives. On the other hand, the media companies seek to extend their reach by merging, co-opting, converging and synergizing their brands and intellectual properties across all of these channels. In some ways, this has concentrated the power of traditional gatekeepers and agenda setters and in other ways, it has disintegrated their tight control over our culture.
Convergence therefore must be understood as both a top-down corporate-driven process and a bottom-up consumer-driven process. Media companies are learning how to accelerate the flow of media content across delivery channels to expand revenue opportunities, broaden markets and reinforce consumer loyalties and commitments. Users are learning how to master these different media technologies to bring the flow of media more fully under their control and to interact (and co-create) with other users. Sometimes, these two forces reinforce each other, creating closer, more rewarding, relations between media producers and consumers. Sometimes the two forces conflict, resulting in constant renegotiations of power between these competing pressures on the new media ecology."
Table of Contents
Henry Jenkins and Mark Deuze: Convergence Culture
danah boyd: Facebook's Privacy Trainwreck: Exposure, Invasion, and Social Convergence
Neil Perryman: Doctor Who and the Convergence of Media: A Case Study in Transmedia Storytelling
Christy Dena: Emerging Participatory Culture Practices: Player-Created Tiers in Alternate Reality Games
Hector Postigo: Video Game Appropriation through Modifications: Attitudes Concerning Intellectual Property among Modders and Fans
Daren C. Brabham: Crowdsourcing as a Model for Problem Solving: An Introduction and Cases
Larissa Hjorth: Being Real in the Mobile Reel: A Case Study on Convergent Mobile Media as Domesticated New Media in Seoul, South Korea
Gunn Sara Enli: Redefining Public Service Broadcasting: Multi-Platform Participation
Posts
5 reacties:
Prof. Deuze - first of all, congrats to you, Prof Jenkins and the authors on a very good, timely and extremely interesting issue.
There's one thing, though. I'm speaking for myself, but as someone who has been involved with Convergence for a few years (as current Reviews editor, and formerly as editorial assistant and sometime special issue editor), I must say that I'm bemused by danah's call for a boycott (I've already commented on her post), and surprised by your apparent support for it (though you may just be noting her response).
Surely a blanket boycott of any and every journal that has locked down content can only be counterproductive? To take one example, early career scholars who follow this advice will surely be denying themselves important publication opportunities, and therefore jobs, tenure etc. Further, the culture of a journal, its network of contributors and supporters, indeed everything that guarantees its quality, or that makes people care about it and want to contribute to it, takes time and effort to build up. If publishers are intransigent about opening content up, does that mean we should effectively shut down New Media and Society, Television and New Media and Convergence (just to take Sage-published examples)? To be replaced with what?
You yourself have published books with academic presses. I imagine you can appreciate that journal editors and authors, while they may not be necessarily comfortable with locked-down content, are faced with the pragmatics of distributing their work for maximum impact, and often take the editorial and distributional help that major publishers provide, and which they expect a return on. This is so that they can concentrate on the intellectual and logistical aspects of putting together a book or several journal issues a year - the work of writing, getting peer reviewers, coordinating special issues, etc. It might not be very punk rock, but negotiating the overlapping institutions that govern academic publishing is part of what we do. Needless to say, the logical extension of what danah is suggesting is a boycott of publishers who deal in books, or any kind of content that isn't freely available, on demand. I suspect positive engagement with these institutions will prove to be a far better strategy in the long run.
"Demands", premised on a simplistic account of how academic publishing works, may garner some support in the short term, especially from those outside academia. But this undermines the work of some dedicated people, who have contributed to establishing the field of inquiry we're working in.
It's a shame that danah decided to make Convergence her case in point - I know how the journal is produced and under what circumstances, and its history in arriving at a major publisher doesn't in the least resemble her account of academic publishing.
Sorry for the length of the comment, but I feel that this issue is important. Once again, my sincere congratulations on the issue.
thanks for your comment Jason. its a complex situation - not unlike the one many of the other established media industries find themselves in. they have to adapt to a digital culture where bricolage, participation and remediation are the principal components, but these values often are in contradiction with those of expert systems, top-down distribution models, and restrictions on use.
Obviously this is not a black-and-white issue (nothing is). I'm pretty confident one can do both: submit to open access and "locked down" journals, that is, especially because the people involved in contributing to and editing such journals are generally (or should be) passionate about their work, the work of their peers, and are in it particularly to support emerging and junior scholars.
That said, I do feel danah makes an important point that needs to be addressed - especially if we are really serious about a global "knowledge economy", that truly empowers access to knowledge for everyone.
Thanks for the response.
No one could argue with the obvious point that it would be better if the content of journals were freely available to whomever wanted to access it. I have tried to negotiate variations on the standard Sage copyright deal myself in the past, on behalf of authors. My own publications and reflect my own concern with opening up "top-down distribution models" and other restrictions.
But you're right, the essence of this situation is that it's complicated, and it deserves a considered response. Actions like a blanket boycott precisely would, in my view, reduce it to a black and white affair. For ECRs especially, it would actually be damaging. Hence the concern.
And I also think you're right that an ethical response to the challenges you mention is to vary the venues in which your work is published, and try to make sure that the key elements of your research are freely available somewhere. But of course this is the approach that I, and most of the scholars I respect, already take.
oops sorry about mucking up the link...
Jason, and others who come and visit here on this: I sincerely hope you're interested in checking out the contributions of the various authors to our special issue - if so, and you do not have access to the journal, let me know via email!
Also, if you want to continue this important debate about how and where to publish in open access platforms, please see the excellent debate and post at danah boyd's site.
Post a Comment