I am really getting the feeling that I am starting to get a hang of these blogs. I feel now that I can confidently look back at other theorist and relate the topic at hand to one of the people we have studied in the past. In the first class this week, we talked about a man named Jenkins and his two main points about media convergence and participatory culture. I looked a media convergence and studied it in a way of looking at how other types of media grow. Media convergence is then you take a product such as star wars or a popular book or toy such as harry potter and you continue to make it an even bigger item then it was before. For example we took a look at star wars in class and if you really think about it, star wars was just a movie and then it became a book and next you have toys and so on. If we stay on track with the theme of star wars and look at participatory culture we can easily say that people are taking it one step further and creating groups online or even holding conventions where people can dress up in their favorite character and meet people that are interested in star wars. We can also look at participatory culture as if we watching a reality TV show and right after the show ends we go online and blog on site that are talking about the show.
On Thursday we discussed the notion of ideology and talked about two men, Karl Marx and Louis Althusser. Marx brings up a good put by stating that “he who has the gold, rules!” by saying this it puts a stop light on the people who set the ideologies. With this we can see that they are as at the top of the “ruling intellectual force.” Marx states, “the class that has the means of material production at its disposal, consequently as controls the means of mental production.” By saying this, it is telling our contemporary society that we should be following the ideologies that the upper class is setting. I gave an example of this in my mid week post about the American dream and how it is falsified.
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I'm glad that you are feeling more and more confident about blogging and writing about the material we cover in class. You give a good explanation about what participatory culture is but then on the other hand I think you would benefit from reviewing Marx and what he means by the material producing class having the power over the ideologies produces - if there are more people in the middle class why is it that they answer to the ruling/elite class? Surely those in control of what is being produced have the control over what everyone thinks. Think about how participatory culture, as identifies by Jenkins, has changed the structure of class is society today - any questions just let me know or read your classmates blogs! :)
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