During my research on Audiences I read some work by Jenkins on Fan Culture and Gamers. I thought his idea of audience autonomy was really interesting and has definitely made me question how media technologies make their audiences feel as though they have a certain amount of control over distribution and content within certain mediums.
In his book I looked at chapter 6 ‘Interactive Audiences? The “Collective Intelligence” of Media Fans’ Pg. 134
Jenkins begins this chapter by identifying the “new youth consumer”, an active, no-longer passive audience member who interacts with his choice of media. He is no longer just a “media consumer” or a “media fan, but also a media producer, distributor, publicist, and critic”. Jenkins argues that even though new audiences have the power to interact, this does not mean they are in any way “autonomous”. They are still heavily reliant on, and operating “alongside powerful media industries”. Just because the engagement and interaction of media spectatorship is now “visible” where it was once “invisible”, doesn’t mean that the public audiences are being “liberated through improved media technologies”. He says that rather than discussing the interactive media and technologies themselves, “we should document the interactions that occur among media consumers, between media consumers and media texts, and between media consumers and media producers”. He defines three trends that he believes “the new participatory culture” is being shaped from:
“1. New tools and technologies enable consumers to archive, annotate, appropriate, and recirculate media content:
2. A range of subcultures promote Do-It-Yourself (DIY) media production, a discourse that shapes how consumers have deployed those technologies; and
3. Economic trends favouring the horizontally integrated media conglomerates encourage the flow of images, ideas, and narratives across multiple media channels and demand more active modes of spectatorship.”
His chapter discusses ways these three trends have changed the way media audiences operate in relation to their chosen interactive media and how the media itself has changed in relation to its new audience.
Jenkins, H 2006, Fans, Bloggers, AND Gamers Exploring Participatory Culture’, New York University Press, New York And London