Week 6: Convergence culture

I’m a bit confused by the concept of convergence; but then, I guess that’s not an inappropriate response. There were even times during the lecture that I got a little bit lost, trying to see how it all fits together. It’s a complex topic.

I liked Deuze’s exploration of the “Truman Show” idea. I grew up watching The Truman Show and there was always a cheer among my family members when Truman ran that little boat into the wall and got the hell outta there. As Deuze points out, Truman is shutting the door on the media surveillance camera that has defined and directed his life and which he only now realizes he has a choice to escape from. And we wreath him as a hero for it. 

There was a little thought-storm brewing in the back of my mind the more I pondered Truman in relation to modern advances in convergence technology. Children are being born into this world of Jenkin’s “convergence culture”. I saw a YouTube video with a one-year-old baby trying to make the ‘icons’ on a magazine ‘open’ as if the magazine were an iPad. Are we raising the next generation to be Trumans, living with this web of information flowing across every media platform and space they are exposed to until it’s naturalized for them?

Arguably, no. Truman’s family and social networks deliberately didn’t reveal that he was the focus of a ‘media magnifying glass’ or that his surroundings were constructed, as this would likely have destroyed a vital aspect of the show: it’s candidness. It should be obvious, conversely, to children growing up that the world of Facebook and its family are a construction and are not to be looked at as an strict reflection of reality. But if they’ve grown up being surrounded by this web of information flow and if it’s all related and knitted together like a very well-constructed ‘web’, I think kids would start to just…accept. And as Deuze notes, our little Trumans “…would have turned The Truman Show into a 24/7 videoblog (or audio-only pod- cast), offering a running commentary on the global status quo…”.

I’m not saying I think convergence culture is a bad thing. I think, as was noted in the lecture, that it’s a response to a lot of changes and it, in and of itself, is creating change.