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Henry Jenkins's Convergence Culture and the Fragmentation of Our Monoculture
Since the 1940s, three channels have dominated cable production in the United States: ABC, NBC, and CBS. Colloquially known as the “Big Three,” these channels contained the majority of shows that Americans watched and discussed with each other. Other networks, such as DuMont, were not as widespread. The Big Three achieved their popularity through broadcasting a limited number of originally scripted programs that garnered the greatest followings, and this smaller number of shows also meant that audiences were not overwhelmed with too many choices; therefore, fans could more easily connect with other viewers of shows.
Almost seventy years later, as new technology such as streaming platforms and social media continues to develop in the United States, the way people interact with television and film continues to evolve. A free market, without the Big Three’s monopoly, facilitates more aggressive competition for content that appeals to a variety of large audiences. As a result, the definition of popular culture in the West has shifted from a 20th century centralized monoculture, where content encompassed similar themes and followed white, heteronormative structures, to a 21st century fragmented convergent culture, where there is an overload of different kinds of content through different formats, due to influences of social media, algorithms, and streaming platforms, among other cultural forces. In reaction to these influences, Generation Z (born 1997-2012) yearns for more individualized content and experiential marketing, resulting in a shift from traditional monoculture to a fragmented convergent culture, despite the paradoxical second wave of homogenized content—a return to a cable television-like structure of releasing narratives—arising from such a surplus in media.
The recognition of what is popular in contemporary society varies so widely from person to person that a blanket definition is not easily applied and lacks a coherent understanding and structure of how popular culture evolves.
Any discussion of contemporary popular culture needs a stable understanding, or at least a point of departure from which to start. Jonathan Storey’s Cultural Theory and Popular Culture: An Introduction 5th Edition (2009) provides six different definitions to examine popular culture with the first being that popular culture is “simply culture that is widely favored or well-liked by many people.”1 This definition addresses the basics of popular culture, but Storey also explains how this basic definition is too self-explanatory to provide any indication of how popular culture operates: “The difficulty might prove to be that, paradoxically, it tells us too much.”2 The recognition of what is popular in contemporary society varies so widely from person to person that a blanket definition is not easily applied and lacks a coherent understanding and structure of how popular culture evolves.
Storey then provides four other definitions of popular culture: what is left over from high culture, mass culture, something that originates from the people, and Antonio Gramsci’s conception of hegemony. The sixth definition is the most relevant to the operation of contemporary popular culture that emerged from the Postmodern movement of the 1960s. Postmodern popular culture is an intersection between the forces of capitalist industries and artistic integrity with a diminishing distinction between commerce and culture as more media develops. Storey explains how this sixth definition splits into two different sectors, one of large groups of people and one of capitalism: “Postmodern culture is a culture that no longer recognizes the distinction between high and popular culture.”3 A great example of postmodern culture is the movement of Pop Art, with one of the most recognizable figures being Andy Warhol with pieces like Marilyn Diptych (1962)Ed. Note: Tate's Information page on Mariyln Diptych and Campbell’s Soup Cans (1968)Ed. Note: Information page on Campebell’s Soup Cans, which were made using a silkscreen, allowing Warhol and his team to reproduce the same images of popular culture many times with different colors (with the images here being Marilyn Monroe and cans of Campbell’s soup). These works took the subject of wider popular knowledge enjoyed by all economic classes and created “high art” for profit. Warhol’s efforts are not considered uncreative as he is operating within the conventional art sphere, but he is blending what is popular amongst all classes with an established “higher” community. Postmodernism also housed the Deconstruction literary movement, which focused on taking apart Western values and previously established conventional “rules” of society.
The Big Three operated as a monoculture because they included few channels, and they created content that appealed to a majority of viewers, meaning that shows and films focused most often on white, heteronormative and cisgender characters
Traditionally, popular culture was mostly defined as a “monoculture.” The word monoculture stems from farming, as in one crop growing in a specific area. Kyle Chayka in the Vox article “Can Monoculture Survive the Algorithm?” relates this term to how media was produced in past decades. Monoculture refers to cultural products that try to encapsulate large audiences with relatable and homogenized structures. The Big Three operated as a monoculture because they included few channels, and they created content that appealed to a majority of viewers, meaning that shows and films focused most often on white, heteronormative and cisgender characters with examples such as large comedy shows Seinfeld (1989-1998), The Office (2005-2013), and Friends (1994-2004). These shows related to the working-class American experience, used many of the same joke structures, and did not include much diversity or writing from people of color or those of the LGBTQ+ community. Cable television shows also tended to employ episodic rather than serial structures, so viewers could easily follow the plot of any airing without context other episodes. George W.S. Trow in his 1980 essay “Within the Context of No-Context” for The New Yorker depicts this monoculture as a “200-million-person grid.”4 Trow explains that even though there were 200 million people spread across the country, viewers felt connected through the power grid of televisions as they all tuned into the same anticipated programming for the night with the knowledge that they would be able to discuss what they saw the next day with others.
Henry Jenkins’s book Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide published in 2006 coins a postmodern definition of popular culture as convergence culture. Jenkins discusses how popular culture has evolved with the production of new technologies and media companies. The Big Three no longer monopolize their market. Jenkins provides a definition of convergent culture, stating "By convergence, I mean the flow of content across multiple media platforms, the cooperation between multiple media industries, and the migratory behavior of media audiences who will go almost anywhere in search of the kinds of entertainment experiences they want."5
In contemporary culture, the audience has more agency to seek out the content they want than in the past with the Big Three, but viewers are also being led by these companies, using their products to generate interest. Currently, media industries are creating, marketing, and releasing large varieties of media for popular consumption. The participants of this convergent culture consume the content that suits them and engages with the community surrounding the media. According to Jenkins, “Convergence, as we can see, is both a top-down corporate-driven process and a bottom-up consumer-driven process.”6 One of the main components of convergence culture is the presence of the culture industry alongside active fans.
The culture industry is a concept introduced by theorists Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer that equates popular culture to a well-oiled machine, pumping out formulaic narratives and the audiences passively lap them up or fall into their trap. They state in Dialect of Enlightenment (1947) that “movies and radio no longer pretend to be art,”7 which criticizes that narratives no longer maintain their artistic integrity once they are mass-produced for profit. The characterization of culture as an industry may offend those who produce content for mass commercial consumption, but the idea is neither new nor obscure. For decades, critics have questioned Hollywood’s motives, especially in the 21st century as many capitalist production companies fight for the attention of their audiences by producing copious content to lock in subscribers. However, this market dynamic does not necessarily void media of all artistic integrity.
According to Jenkins, three key elements constitute convergence culture: Pierre Lévy’s collective intelligence, transmedia storytelling, and participatory audiences/culture. Jenkins explains that collective intelligence refers to a group or fanbase sharing information about a narrative, working to “figure out” the narrative: “These communities, however, are held together through the mutual production and reciprocal exchange of knowledge.”8 Jenkins provides an example in Convergence Culture about the popular reality show Survivor (2004) where the fanbase’s shared intelligence of the production of the show shared through online forums allowed them to spoil the newest season before it even aired.
Another key element of convergent culture is transmedia storytelling, which refers to when pieces of the same narrative are accessible on different platforms through different formats such as mini games, promoting users to use different platforms to engage with narratives. Jenkins states that audiences will trace content through different channels to aid in their understanding of the show: “To fully experience any fictional world, consumers must assume the role of hunters and gatherers, chasing down bits of the story across media channels.”9 For example, a social media campaign for a show that brings the viewer to a website where they could then access a streaming platform creates this traveling line of audiences that are led by production companies. Additionally, audiences are seeking out these different avenues to better appreciate the narrative and to have an overall stronger understanding of the show or film. Jenkins provides the example of the Matrix franchise implementing side games that viewers could play to provide further knowledge of the films. Finally, the third component of convergence culture is participatory culture. Participatory culture maintains that audiences are not passive figures just ingesting content placed in front of them, but rather they are actively seeking this type of content and engaging in the narratives that they enjoy. Participatory audiences often utilize social media and online forums to connect with other fans and raise awareness for the media they consume, building communities within fan bases faster than previous decades.
Another key element of convergence culture is a term Jenkins coins as the “Black Box Fallacy,” the seemingly logical but erroneous projection that all media will ultimately reach audiences through one collective conduit. Jenkins, instead, explains how media becomes more fragmented. Through the explosion of different streaming platforms, such as Netflix, Hulu, Max, Disney+, Apple TV+, Peacock, Paramount+, and Prime Video. With such a wide variety of different options to choose from to consume content in conjunction with the amount of content on each streaming platform, keeping track of what is popular is more arduous and time-consuming than ever before. Jenkins then explains how the Black Box Fallacy provides an explanation of why content delivery becomes so fractured: “Sooner or later, the argument goes, all media content is going to flow through a single black box into our living rooms…but in my living room, I am seeing more and more black boxes.”10 He then refers to the different devices used such as VHS, DVD, BluRay, gaming cartridges, and any remotes used to control these devices. Jenkins uses the pile of technology to show how there is no futuristic device to hold all of these medias together, but rather how they begin to clutter.
This fallacy can be applied to the emerging number of streaming platforms as each company tries to harbor an audience with their own original content and dominate the market until there are so many options that it is almost impossible to keep up with them all. Jenkins writes that narratives will always accumulate because “each old medium was forced to coexist with the emerging media. That's why convergence seems more plausible as a way of understanding the past several decades of media change than the old digital revolution paradigm had.”11 These platforms are all emerging at the same time as a response to the past structure of cable television and the increase of overall cell phone usage. All of these factors create an overlapping of many platforms instead of combining into a single platform or “black box.”
Through the examination of a fragmented convergent culture, how the future will unfold is, of course, uncertain, but for our immediate future we can assert, hopefully not in vain, one suggestion: as the idea of monocultural icons slowly wash away and the more personalized content comes to the forefront, quick trends and subcultures consume audiences.
