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How sharing, linking, and liking have transformed the media and marketing industries



Spreadable Media is a rare inside look at today's ever-changing media landscape. The days of corporate control over media content and its distribution have been replaced by the age of what the digital media industries have called "user-generated content." Spreadable Media maps these fundamental changes, and gives readers a comprehensive look into the rise of participatory culture, from internet memes to presidential tweets.

The authors challenge our notions of what goes "viral" and how by examining factors such as the nature of audience engagement and the environment of participation, and by contrasting the concepts of "stickiness"-aggregating attention in centralized places-with "spreadability"-dispersing content widely through both formal and informal networks. The former has often been the measure of media success in the online world, but the latter describes the actual ways content travels through social media. The book explores the internal tensions businesses face as they adapt to this new, spreadable, communication reality and argues for the need to shift from "hearing" to "listening" in corporate culture.

Now with a new afterword addressing changes in the media industry, audience participation, and political reporting, and drawing on modern examples from online activism campaigns, film, music, television, advertising, and social media-from both the US and around the world-the authors illustrate the contours of our current media environment. For all of us who actively create and share content, Spreadable Media provides a clear understanding of how people are spreading ideas and the implications these activities have for business, politics, and everyday life, both on- and offline. "Something new is emerging from the collision of traditional entertainment media, Internet-empowered fan cultures, and the norms of sharing that are encouraged and amplified by social media. Spreadable Media is a compelling guide, both entertaining and rigorous, to the new norms, cultures, enterprises, and social phenomena that networked culture is making possible. Read it to understand what your kids are doing, where Hollywood is going, and how online social networks spread cultural productions as a new form of sociality." -- Howard Rheingold,author of Net Smart "Finally, a way of framing modern media creation and consumption that actually reflects reality and allows us to talk about it in a way that makes sense. It's a spreadable world and we are ALL part of it. Useful for anyone who makes media, analyzes it, consumes it, markets it or breathes." -- Jane Espenson,writer-producer of Battlestar Galactica, Once Upon a Time, and Husbands "Content today, the authors suggest, can travel not only from the top down but also from the inside out. It is a remarkably different terrain than what we have been used to, one they effectively and stridently analyze." * Publishers Weekly * "It's about time a group of thinkers put the marketing evangelists of the day out to pasture with a thorough look at what makes content move from consumer to consumer, marketer to consumer and consumer to marketer. Instead of latching on to the notion that you can create viral content, Jenkins, Ford, and Green question the assumptions, test theories and call us all to task. Spreadable Media pushes our thinking. As a result, we'll become smarter marketers. Why wouldn't you read this book?" -- Jason Falls,CEO of Social Media Explorer and co-author of No Bullshit Social Media "In Spreadable Media, media theorist Henry Jenkins, formerly of MIT and now at USC, and his coauthors, digital strategists Sam Ford and Joshua Green, make a convincing case that fan involvement in the re-creation and circulation of media content is not just an interesting side effect of man-to-many multimedia networks and smartphone video editing apps, but a significant force for empowerment and exploitation in and of itself...If you are in the music, move, television, or game business, this book is a must read." * Strategy and Business * "Spreadable Media is an essential read for anyone who wants to understand how media works today." * Deep Media * "By critically interrogating the ways in which media artifacts circulate, Spreadable Media challenges the popular notion that digital content magically goes & viral. This book brilliantly describes the dynamics that underpin people's engagement with social media in ways that are both theoretically rich and publicly meaningful." -- danah boyd, Microsoft Research "Solid analysis and detailed examples to make it sticky enough for the intended readerships of media scholars, media professionals, and fans." * International Journal of Communication * "The best analysis to date of the radically new nature of digital social media as a communication channel. Its insights, based on a deep knowledge of the technology and culture embedded in the digital networks of communication, will reshape our understanding of cultural change for years to come." -- Manuel Castells,Wallis Annenberg Chair of Communication Technology and Society, University of Southern California "A wide-ranging examination of the contemporary media environment as individuals increasingly control their own creation of content." * Kirkus *

Spreadable Media: Creating Value and Meaning in a Networked Culture

Acknowledgments How to Read This Book Introduction: Why Media Spreads 1 Where Web 2.0 Went Wrong 2 Reappraising the Residual 3 The Value of Media Engagement 4 What Constitutes Meaningful Participation? 5 Designing for Spreadability 6 Courting Supporters for Independent Media 7 Thinking Transnationally Conclusion Notes References Index About the Authors