Promises and Pitfalls of the Digital Age: A Review of Henry Jenkins, Sam Ford, and Joshua Green's Spreadable Media: Creating Value and Meaning in a Networked Culture

Abstract

Readers who have worked through Henry Jenkins's influential Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide (New York University Press, 2008) will find Spreadable Media (coauthored by Jenkins, Sam Ford, and Joshua Green) to be a compelling extension of many of the themes and arguments of the previous work. The authors of Spreadable Media provide a plethora of examples that illustrate the changing nature of media and popular culture (moving from old to new), but they also advance several theoretical arguments that bring insight about these changes.Spreadable Media is a perceptive description of the current state of social media and how electronic communication is being used to foster reciprocal relationships among consumers/citizens and between consumers/citizens and corporations/producers of culture. It moves beyond mere description, however, by identifying problems that affect these relationships and suggesting paths forward that will improve these relationships.The most basic focus of the book is nothing new; it is the idea of “participatory culture” that Jenkins and others have been investigating for years. Spreadable media, in fact, are media that can be manipulated and circulated by everyone, and not simply media that are created and distributed by the culture industry. “This shift from distribution to circulation signals a movement toward a more participatory model of culture,” the authors write, “one which sees the public not as simply consumers of preconstructed messages but as people who are shaping, sharing, reframing, and remixing media content in ways which might not have been previously imagined.” They add that these creators of culture “are doing so not as isolated individuals but within larger communities and networks, which allow them to spread content well beyond their immediate geographic proximity” (2). Take the example of fans. For many years, fans have created and shared media sometimes in spite of the primary producers (those who create the product of which the fans are fans). Now something different seems to be happening. As the authors note, we “are moving from focusing on the oppositional relationship between fans and producers as a form of cultural resistance to understanding those roles as increasingly and complexly intertwined” (36–37). Fans not only are sharing the product; they are critiquing, elaborating, extending, and manipulating it—in short, re-creating product or creating new product from old.It is this moving beyond old and tired oppositions that opens a space for new and different media, and this movement requires of the authors new and different theoretical tools for understanding and critiquing what is taking place. One such tool is the idea of the gift economy—an idea that leads to interesting insights about value and power.The gift economy is different from commodity culture. The latter refers to the standard understanding of the culture industry, in which there is a producer of a cultural artifact that the user passively purchases and consumes. Spreading or sharing the product here is a problem for the producer, since it potentially cuts into the profits generated by the sale of the product. But users who share products (for example, music, videos, etc.) are not thinking about profits. What they are sharing is more like a gift than a commodity. “Within commodity culture, sharing content may be viewed as economically damaging,” the authors note; “in the informal gift economy, by contrast, the failure to share material is socially damaging” (63). Drawing on the work of theorists like Howard Rheingold (The Virtual Community), Lawrence Lessig (Remix), and Lewis Hyde (The Gift), the authors demonstrate how this different way of thinking about sharing changes not only how we view the user but also how the producer must think about his or her product when it goes out into the market. The authors conclude: For media properties to move from the commodity culture in which they are produced to informal social contexts through which they circulate and are appraised, they must pass through a point where “value” gets transformed into “worth,” where what has a price becomes priceless, where economic investment gives way to sentimental investment. Similarly, when a fan culture's “gifts” are transformed into “user-generated content,” there are special sensitivities involved as the material gets absorbed back into commercial culture. When people pass along media texts, they are not doing so as paid employees motivated by economic gain; rather, they are members of social communities involved in activities which are meaningful to them on an individual and/or social level. Such movement—and the transformations that media texts undergo as they are circulated—can generate both value and worth. However, content producers and online platforms alike have to be keenly aware of the logics of worth being employed by their audiences or risk alienating those who are emotionally invested in the material. (72)As the authors note, thinking about the gift economy leads us to think about value. And what complicates our thinking about value is the fact that we often think of it merely in market terms. Thus, the price of something is its value. But gifts show us that value can be other than monetary. In other words, the value of an item as a gift can vary considerably from the market price of that item. We all have received gifts that did not cost much money but were of great personal value to us. At the same time, we all have received gifts that cost a lot of money but really did not mean much to us (and thus had little personal value).In the context of media, then, it is easy to see how the commercialization or commodification of material that is being offered as a gift or is thought of as a gift can disturb or alter our understanding of the value of that material. When traditional producers charge for access to material or use the efforts of their constituencies to turn a profit, these actions can leave consumers offended and embittered. Thus, the authors warn, “it matters how media companies understand the value that fans create around their property. It matters whether audiences are seen as commodities or labor, whether companies assume that valuable content can only originate from the commercial sector, and whether all authority rests with sanctioned contributors or whether legal practices of the networks and studios [in the case of the film and television industries] protect space for more transformative uses” (151–52).Ultimately, figuring out what is of value and how we can have a more participatory culture in regard to the creation of value requires that we address the issue of power. Indeed, confronting the issue of power perhaps is the central task for advocates of participatory culture and it certainly is one of the central “payoffs” (if not the central “payoff”) of Spreadable Media. Although the authors reject the notion that they are engaged in some “revolutionary agenda” (they identify themselves as reformist instead), they nevertheless admit to “offering pragmatic advice in hopes of creating a more equitable balance of power within society” (xii). They see the balance of power already shifting in the media world and want to encourage its further development. “The growth of networked communication, especially when coupled with the practices of participatory culture, provides a range of new resources and facilitates new interventions for a variety of groups who have long struggled to have their voices heard,” the authors claim. “New platforms create openings for social, cultural, economic, legal, and political change and opportunities for diversity and democratization for which it is worth fighting” (xiv).What is happening “out there” is reflected in what the authors see reflected in the changing vocabulary of academics, where an emphasis on “resistance” (against the dominant power structure, media hegemony, etc.) is being replaced by an emphasis on “participation” (in creating media content, influencing what producers provide, etc.) (163). While industries and companies still often exploit this participation for economic gain, we cannot ignore the fact that “audiences are not simply pawns for commercial interests or political elites; their shared identities and collective communication capacity allow them to speak out about their perceived interests” (165). In the United States, participation shifts power away from its concentration in specific industries or companies and spreads it more equitably throughout the population. On a global scale, participation also means that the power to create cultural products is diffused among people from around the world. Thus, the authors “believe that the informal spread of media content through networked communications may circumnavigate if not circumvent some of the factors (political, legal, economic, cultural) which have allowed U.S. mass media to maintain its dominance throughout much of the twentieth century” (261).The authors share a healthy skepticism about how far media and new technology can democratize culture. They realize that there is no magic formula or gadget that will solve the problems of the marginalized and the voiceless. Their plight requires much more than Facebook or whatever is the next big advancement in social media. As the authors conclude, “We do not and may never live in a society where every member is able to fully participate, where the lowest of the low has the same communicative capacity as the most powerful elites. Insofar as participation within networked public becomes a source of discursive and persuasive power—and insofar as the capacities to meaningfully participate online are linked to educational and economic opportunities—then the struggle over the right to participation is linked to core issues of social justice and equality” (193–94).While I applaud the authors for their insightful consideration about value and power, I think there were two areas in which their work needed further development. The first involves their use of the concept “community.” The authors sometimes refer to communities and sometimes to networks. In certain instances, they even talk about “communities and networks” (2). But communities are not mere networks, and a network does not constitute a community. I do not think the authors are confused on this matter, but their work does not always make clear the distinction. When we talk about value as a product of a community or about power as something that ought to reside in a community, then we really need a clear understanding of what a community is. And we need to make sure that we do not mistake a mere network for a real community.The second area that deserves further development is in regard to the end or goal of participation. What is it? The authors write about what they call “civic media” and the goal of increasing citizen engagement in the political process. But most of their examples in the book really are not about “civic media.” They are about television, YouTube, and other forms of popular culture that seem very disconnected from politics and public policy. What end is served by our participation in all of that? The authors make clear that they “are not arguing here that spreadability necessarily leads to a utopian vision of a more informed, more responsible, more ethical society. Rather, as more people take an active role in shaping the creation and circulation of media texts, the public has access—for better and worse—to a greater range of voices” (226–27). More voices may indeed be a good thing, and we legitimately can describe such a greater range of voices as a kind of democratization of popular culture. But if popular culture is often mindless pablum that prevents us from addressing real political problems like poverty, illiteracy, infant mortality, and other intransigent issues, then having more voices decide the shape of the pablum (if pablum even can have a shape) is a limited success at best. Communities in the United States and around the world have real problems. Perhaps the democratization of media and popular culture can empower citizens to more effectively address these problems. Indeed, I suspect that there must be some positive effect. At this point, however, I am not convinced that the effect is very great.Of course, it is hard to find fault with the authors on either of these areas of critique. As they observe, the book “is describing a moment of transition, one in which an old system is shattering without us yet knowing what is going to replace it” (295). Describing such moments, when one is in the midst of it, is incredibly difficult. It is even harder to prophesy about what will happen next. The authors wisely avoid such prophesy. They are not predicting the future but urging us to “construct a system which pays more attention to the public interest—defined not through elite institutions but by the public itself, through its acts of appraisal, curation, and circulation” (295). Only in this way might we have a more participatory and democratic (popular) culture, one that might lead to greater social justice and equality across the board. In the end, then, this is a book not just for media scholars and practitioners but for anyone interested in the future of democracy. In that sense, it is an even more important book than its title would suggest.