post-it note, 3/5/2009

The first day home on Spring Break and I was reading the magazine that I took from the plane and began to flip through the pages looking at the pictures. A story about a new participatory culture was featured in the magazine explained like this:

           

“Puling potential customers into contests and other forms of active participation is what Madison Avenue marketing calls experiential marketing. And it’s coming to a bar, mall, or rock concert near you.”

 

Called brand ambassadors, those who are paid to interact with potential customers, assist companies in programs that they believe boost sales because of the emotional attachment and memorability of “when you try, you buy.” To me, this is an additional cycle in the commodification of participatory culture. Now, giving potential consumers an opportunity to try new products makes the threat of illegal commodfication of creator’s original ideas less probable. Companies such as food and video game companies, especially Rock Band, initiate taste tests and game play through brand ambassadors. These people are hired and have already bought into the appreciation and fun of the food or game being offered, for example, but are also knowledgeable about the products that they ultimately endorse.

 

It seems as if learning about something makes it appear to be everywhere, and Claire brought participatory culture to my attention, I am very impressed by her interest in participatory culture and am also so happy that she was able to find an outlet for her interests in the Internet. A great example of the importance of the Internet, and a great response for my mother the next time she complains about the technicalities of the world wide web. Claire taught me so many new things about a culture that is invisible to me because I do not access the areas of the web that take me to pictures of rubber duckies dressed as Jack Sparrow, but seeing it makes me more interested in CMC as a major because it is truly all around us, as a magazine proved to me. I guess all we have to do is open our eyes.

Asyouwish/speaker 3/8/09

Thursday's class speaker made me aware of phenomena that I did not know even existed.  I had no idea that there were so many fan bases of all different types of things, nor how serious these fans took their website posts and fan communities.  I really learned a lot from this class and it in my opinion was a fun and great experience being able to hear from a Rollins' graduate and her life after Rollins.  I also greatly enjoyed watching the youtube clips.  I had never seen nor heard of a single one of the videos she showed us that were based on fandom culture.  Then this past Friday the strangest thing occurred.  I had taken the comic book class, American Graphic Media, my sophomore year of college. While in this class we read many comic books, and thus I was actually able to understand the youtube videos of the comic book characters arguing, whereas I otherwise would not have understood.  I actually really enjoyed the youtube videos by "justsomerandomguy" and after class I went back to my room to watch more of his video creations.  (Now back to what happened Friday).  On Friday I met up with Dr. Chambliss, Dr. S and a few other students who were in the graphic media class to attend to eat at Johnny Rockets and then go to see The Watchmen (which by the way, was amazing). It was during our meal at Johnny Rockets that Dr. Chambliss began discussing a video with Dr. S and a fellow student.  They were discussing a video which contained action figures who were arguing. It was at this point I looked at them and asked if they were talking about the youtube videos by "justsomerandomguy".  They nodded and looked at me shocked because out of the group I am by far the least knowledgeable when it comes to comic books and comic book fan culture and yet by some miracle (CMC 350) I knew what they were discussing.  This was among one of the only discussions during that dinner that I actually had the same amount of knowledge and input on the topic, and it was thanks to the random showing of these videos in our class by our presenter, Claire.  The idea that you learn something new everyday is true, had I not been shown these youtube clips in class I would not have realized I was missing out on some of the more popular fan-base videos on youtube. 

Rubber Soul, 3/8

The presenter from the last class made me realize how diverse communities of people can really be. The internet is the driving force for the participatory cultures we were talking about that included Star Wars, Hello Kitty, and Pirates of the Caribbean fandoms. (Swash buckle-swash buckle) Yesterday, I was walking around downtown St. Augustine and I noticed people wearing "authentic" pirate costumes. My friend said that those people dress up like that all the time. They aren't paid, they just take part in these roles for their own personal entertainment. It is an entirely unique experience that only some people take part in around the town. They attempt to recreate a culture and create their own at the same time.

I thought it was interesting to hear about how protective people are about their unique communities. The internet is, for the most part, a public space and people post their opinions and ideas for all to see. But if a stranger comments about something the online community cares about and they aren't familiar with what these people stand for, then controversies erupt and people get offended. If you think about it, though, it's not that surprising. It's like how any "normal" social group would react to outsiders criticizing their community: athletic teams, fraternities, sororities, and other clubs...it's just in a new and different environment.

thestig, 3/8

The notion of a participatory culture is one that I am convinced can have impact in this world. “You are the agent to creating change.” As mentioned in my previous post, this enables the “little guy” to create a film or radio project that can be distributed for relatively cheap. The biggest problem that I foresee with this is, though cheap, its ability to really reach a wide audience. Mainstream media is so influential because there are always millions of people tuned in. You don’t have to go to “it,” “it” comes to you. We are immersed in advertisements for mainstream media tv shows, so we know it’s there, and when we can “get it.” The grassroots movement does not have money to advertise or be a part of the mainstream broadcasting schedule. They can put their movies or radio project up online, but in order to see it, the user has to be looking for it. But honestly, how many times have we sat down at our computer “goggling” some grassroots organization to watch a film about it?



I think a few things need to happen for grassroots to become successful. First, there needs to be a “youtube” portal for grassroots organizations. The advantage to youtube is that it’s free. The disadvantage, as mentioned above, is that no one is likely to find you. This grassroots tube would be a video portal reserved for grassroot films. There should be a fee, a small fee, to have one’s video put on this web site, but there are advantages to this: the money can be used to advertise the grassroots tube, which will hopefully provide more exposure to small organizations. Instead of trying to market your own grassroots organization, do it with others: build a coalition. This grassroots tube would have leverage, and could possibly buy airtime on a major network once, twice, several times a week. Eventually – hopefully – this will get the people caught on to good causes. The second is within us. The people need to get caught on to these good causes. Many people are reserved with their money and with their time, but once they realize how much fun it can be for you, and how much it can mean to someone else if you spend some time of your day to help out a cause, change will happen.

thestig, 3/8

coolbeans, 3/8

The presentation in class on fandoms was interesting to me. As someone who is not very familiar with this particular culture I found the presentation to be informative and organized. I liked how the presenter tied in her research with Jenkins’ theories in order to explain the culture of fandoms. It was clear that she had a true passion for the subject matter which was also nice to see. Also, the presentation clarified some things for me that were originally a bit unclear. Originally I was under the impression that when Jenkins talked about participatory culture, he meant that the consumers produce media that the major companies try to claim a ownership of because of the fact that they do not want the media that the consumers create to be in circulation because of copyright infringement. I learned that this is not at all the case. In class, we had been told that the companies actually encourage fandoms because it helps to get their brand/ product/ movie/ book name out in the public eye. I also never really understood why someone would create videos, stories, art based on a film or book that they liked. The presentation allowed me to see how it was just like any other hobby. The presenter had stated that she had learned many skills from creating fan fiction such as how to edit videos and create her own short movies.
Fandoms are truly an example of participatory culture because people who enjoy media use their own creativity and talents in order to create their own media/versions of the original media. They then share their creations with others through media outlets such as youtube or blog sites so that others can see their work and the name of the product gets out. The companies who created the original are able to keep their own ownership of original because everyone will always refer back to the original in order to come up with ideas for the fandoms (according to the presenter, many follow the canon of the original) and everyone will know what happened in the original version and who produced it.