Bookstore

Brings together the highlights of a decade and a half of groundbreaking research into the cultural life of media consumers

Henry Jenkins's pioneering work in the early 1990s promoted the idea that fans are among the most active, creative, critically engaged, and socially connected consumers of popular culture and that they represent the vanguard of a new relationship with mass media. Though marginal and largely invisible to the general public at the time, today, media producers and advertisers, not to mention researchers and fans, take for granted the idea that the success of a media franchise depends on fan investments and participation.

Bringing together the highlights of a decade and a half of groundbreaking research into the cultural life of media consumers, Fans, Bloggers, and Gamers takes readers from Jenkins's progressive early work defending fan culture against those who would marginalize or stigmatize it, through to his more recent work, combating moral panic and defending Goths and gamers in the wake of the Columbine shootings. Starting with an interview on the current state of fan studies, this volume maps the core theoretical and methodological issues in Fan Studies. It goes on to chart the growth of participatory culture on the web, take up blogging as perhaps the most powerful illustration of how consumer participation impacts mainstream media, and debate the public policy implications surrounding participation and intellectual property. "Jenkins is one of us: a geek, a fan, a popcult packrat. He's also an incisive and unflinching critic. His affection for the subject and sharp eye for 'what it all means' are an unbeatable combination. This is fascinating, engrossing and enlightening reading." -- Cory Doctorow,author of Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town and co-editor of Boing Boing "Jenkins persuasively argues in favor of taking the fan's perspective in analyzing television-- and this is the cornerstone of the new turn in Cultural Studies." * Claremont Review of Books *

Fans, Bloggers, and Gamers: Exploring Participatory Culture

ContentsIntroduction: Confessions of an Aca/Fan I Inside Fandom1 Excerpts from "Matt Hills Interviews Henry Jenkins" 2 Star Trek Rerun, Reread, Rewritten: Fan Writing as Textual Poaching 3 "Normal Female Interest in Men Bonking"4 "Out of the Closet and into the Universe": Queers and Star Trek with John CampbellII Going Digital5 "Do You Enjoy Making the Rest of Us Feel Stupid?": alt.tv.twinpeaks, the Trickster Author, and Viewer Mastery 6 Interactive Audiences? The "Collective Intelligence" of Media Fans 7 Pop Cosmopolitanism: Mapping Cultural Flows in an Age of Media Convergence 8 Love Online 9 Blog This! 10 A Safety Net III Columbine and Beyond11 Professor Jenkins Goes to Washington 12 Coming Up Next! Ambushed on Donahue 13 The War between Effects and Meanings: Rethinking the Video Game Violence Debate 14 The Chinese Columbine: How One Tragedy Ignited the Chinese Government's Simmering Fears of Youth Culture and the Internet 15 "The Monsters Next Door": A Father-SonDialogue about Buffy, Moral Panic, and Generational Differenceswith Henry G. Jenkins IVNotes Index About the Author