Blogging on my Emerson blog
Haven’t been blogging here much lately, but I have been blogging over on my Emerson blog on their Learning Portals site. Using the blog has been a great way to share reading responses to class materials and to connect with and learn from other students, faculty, and staff at the College.
Below is a cross post of my most recent response to two of our readings for class, Bruno LaTour’s “The Sociology of a Door” and the intro to Henry Jenkins Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide.
Question: How does LaTour’s concept of deskilling explain what Jenkin’s calls “convergence culture”? In other words, does convergence require a reduction of skills? If not, how has convergence reframed the common user experience of media?
Jenkins mentions the word “skills” 6 times in the introduction to his book, Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide, in reference to the new skills that people will gain, or will have to gain, in a convergence culture. He explains that new consumer/participants in a culture of convergence (or rather, in his words, those who gain “a fuller mastery over the conceptual skills that consumers have developed in response to media convergence”) will be able to better navigate the changes that convergence culture is having on “work, education, and politics.”
If in a convergence culture people will be, as Jenkins explains, “encouraged to seek out new information and make connections among dispersed media content” then where/among whom might the deskilling be occurring in this new culture?
What I would call Traditional Media Producers (TMPs) - particularly newspaper and broadcast journalists and their editors, publishers and owners - are being deskilled by those participating in this convergence culture. TMPs are having to learn how to “read back” to the audience - as is the case with newspaper reporters who increasingly get their information from bloggers or TV producers responding to fan-fiction audiences. TMPs are the ones struggling to keep up with the changes in technology (and how people are using technology) and to find new business models in order to best respond to their intended (and unintended) audiences.
TMPs are losing control over their audience as a result of convergence culture. Jenkins writes “More and more, industry leaders are returning to convergence as a way of making sense of a moment of disorienting change.”
My fear in the deskilling of TMPs, such as newspaper or broadcast journalists, is that, in the hopes for survival in a convergence culture, they will be forced to compromise their integrity and standards. For example, the Center for Citizen Media, is looking for people to help them create learning modules for citizen journalists, including “1) thoroughness, 2) accuracy, 3) fairness, 4) transparency and 5) independence.” Modules such as these would not be necessary non-TMPs already had a grasp of these concepts. My concern is that traditional journalists will realize that if non-TMPs are not held as accountable on the basis of thoroughness, accuracy, fairness, transparency and independence than TMPs themselves will not hold their own work to the same level of scrutiny.
Jenkins writes that “the skills we acquire through play may have implications for how we learn, work, participate in the political process, and connect with other people around the world.”
My hope is that TMPs and non-TMPs alike will find a balance, learn to listen, collaborate with, and trust one another in a convergence culture where navigating the terrain between thoroughness, accuracy, fairness, transparency and independence in information production and distribution is more important than ever before.
Citizen Media, Education Blogs, Emerson College, Grad School, Media Education, Web 2.0 in Education
