TEDxNYED - Henry Jenkins - 03/06/10

Henry Jenkins joins USC from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he was Peter de Florez Professor in the Humanities. He directed MITs Comparative Media Studies graduate degree program from 1993-2009, setting an innovative research agenda during a time of fundamental change in communication, journalism and entertainment. As one of the first media scholars to chart the changing role of the audience in an environment of increasingly pervasive digital content, Jenkins has been at the forefront of understanding the effects of participatory media on society, politics and culture. His research gives key insights to the success of social-networking Web sites, networked computer games, online fan communities and other advocacy organizations, and emerging news media outlets.

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Today, I'm going to talk to you
about participatory culture

which is a concept
that I've been exploring and developing

over the last 20-something years.

So, I was writing
about participatory culture

before the internet, or at least
before the internet

hit most people's lives.

And, for me, I always draw a distinction
between participatory culture

and participatory media or technologies.

In this talk, I'm going to be talking
very much about that concept

in relation to new media literacies,
but also, and primarily, in relation

to civic engagement.

This is work that's been funded
in recent years

by the MacArthur Foundation,
by the Knight Foundation,

and, most recently, by the Annenburg
School of Journalism and Communication.

I'll begin with a story.
And, this is the story of Peter.

And, Peter lives in New York.
So, he's a resident not too far from here.

He lives with his aunt and his uncle.

Peter considers himself to be a master
of the webs, and he's involved

in a great deal
of adolescent identity play.

He's got multiple identities,
multiple ways of seeing himself

and acting upon the world.

Peter uses social network sites
to connect with his friends

including people
at a nearby private academy

that he has strong ties to.

And, he's also an amateur photographer

whose begun posting
his photographs online.

His photographs have been so good
that they've gotten the attention

of the local newspaper, and he's beginning
to publish his photographs there.

He also is deeply invested
in his community

and takes action,
both individually and collectively

to make the world around him
a better place.

His uncle is fond of noting
that he has in his hands

more power than any previous generation
could have imagined.

And, with great power
comes great responsibility.

By now, you've probably guessed

that my Peter, in this case,
is Peter Parker,

better known as Spiderman.

And, I've framed the beginning of my talk
in that way to make a point,

which is that in our imaginations,
we readily accept the idea

that young people do things in the world
that matter,

that young people can take responsibility
and change the world around them,

that young people are
active social agents,

and that young people need space to pursue
those interests,

and those interests
need to be taken seriously.

I've also begun the story this way,
because I want to illustrate

the ways we can use popular culture
as tools and resources to think with

and to think about
the changing environment around us.

So, one of the things that changed
about Peter Parker

in the time
that I've been a comic book fanboy,

is that Peter Parker once needed to be
deeply embedded in a newspaper.

Indeed, all superheroes were tied
to systems of large-scale communication

in order to get access to information
with which to make sense

of the world around them,
to identify problems and act upon them.

And, increasingly, they've been dispersed.

Peter has lost his job recently
at the newspaper.

He doesn't need it any more.

He's got access to the internet,
and indeed, more and more Peter Parker

gets his information about the world
streaming through

digital technology channels.

The second thing about Peter Parker
is that Peter Parker belongs in a society

where adults and young people relate
to each other as equals.

There's a lot of talk
about digital natives

and digital immigrants.

For me, the important point is, in fact,
the really successful stories

are places where young people and adults
meet each other on equal footing

based on common interests.

And, it's a good thing
that Peter's not judged by his age.

Given that Thor is
about 400, 500 years old,

all of us look young by the standards
Thor sets.

And, Peter makes mistakes.

His aunt looks after him
and follows up behind him,

but he's able to take risks
and pursue interests with an adult

that watches his back,
doesn't snoop over his shoulder.

This is all part of
what I call a participatory culture.

So, for a white paper I wrote
for MacArthur about 4 years ago,

I got interested in the fact

that the Pew Center
for Internet and American Life

was showing at the time that about 58%
of American teens had produced media.

Today, the number's about 65%
of American teens.

About a third of those teens have shared
that media they've produced

with a community
larger than friends and family.

So, there's a communication shift
that's going on

as more and more young people are becoming
participants in their society.

Now, we didn't accept the premise
that we should just take

a laissez-faire attitude,
that these should be feral children

of the internet and they should be raised
by the wolves of Web 2.0.

(Laughter)

Instead, we suggested that there were
basic skills and knowledge

they still needed to acquire.

We identified 12 social skills
and cultural competencies,

in this white paper,
needed to fully participate

in this new environment.

Now, this is the way we normally represent
these sets of social developments,

through technologies.

This chart shows us 3 phases
of technological development.

The logic of that argument is
that a participatory culture

somehow grows out of
those technological platforms.

I want to take us back to Web negative 10.

(Laughter)

The 1850s, young people were using
toy printing presses

to publish what we would now call zines,
which were circulating around the country.

There was a national circuit,
the Amateur Press Association.

These teens developed codes and initials,
phrases like LLL, that they would use

because they had to hand-set the type
in printing out these publications.

And, many of the terms we now use
in the internet

trace their history back to that period
of time,

these social networks,
these virtual communities

that existed around print.

We could carry the notion
of participatory culture forward -

this is only one
of many multiple histories

of participatory culture -
to the amateur radio operators

of the 1920s, where schools,
boy scout troops, churches

operated their own radio stations,
and young people took ownership

of communication resources
in their own community.

We could carry it forward
through the science-fiction community,

which began, by about the 1930s,
to be publishing its own zines,

providing cultural criticism,
speculating about the limits

of science and technology,
and forward still to the underground press

of the 1960s, which became the key voice
of the counter-culture,

or forward to Super 8
and camcorder activists,

who were using those technologies
to build social networks again

and make a difference in the world,
and forward to the indie movement

which used radio and the web to, again,
create alternative channels

of communication.

That's the history
I think we should pay attention to,

not the history of technologies,
because what we see here

is this community, these people,
participatory culture, took advantage

of every new technology,
as it was presented, as a vehicle

by which to participate,
to engage with the world,

to make a difference in their community.

Now, through the MacArthur work,
I make the case

that participatory culture is a rich site
of informal learning.

Because there are low barriers
for engagement,

strong support for sharing creations
with others,

informal mentorship, members believe
their contributions matter.

They care about each others' opinions
of self and worth.

These are key ideas.

Now, by the way, the slide illustrates
the idea of participatory culture,

because a couple of years ago,
I punched that phrase into Google search,

and up came this slide.

Someone had taken my white paper,
turned it into an image

better than the one I would have used,
and so ever since, I've used it

in my presentations. (Laughter)

And, that's precisely
how participatory culture works.

We throw ideas out into the world.

We bring them back in an improved way

because of our engagement
with communities.

So, a couple of years ago, I was in Chile
and met this guy,

who's a senator, Fernando Flores Labra,
who looks, as you can see,

like a Latin-American senator.

But, the difference is that he's
an absolute passionate player

of World of Warcraft and believes
that World of Warcraft holds the key

for thinking about the future
of Latin America. (Laughter)

He believes that young people
connecting on line with each other,

collaborating, forming teams,
developing leadership skills,

that work with people around the world,
who they may never know face-to-face,

holds the potential for inserting
Latin America more decisively

into a global conversation.

Now, we can think about
what he has to say

about World of Warcraft
with what Rober Putnam told us

about bowling.

That is, Robert Putnam tells us,
in the 1950s,

the bowling league was the center
of civic life

in small-town America.

People gathered to bowl,
but they also had a range

of other conversations that took place
around that practice.

And, the social network that emerges
from that becomes key

to political engagement in the period
that is to follow.

Now, he has a kind of dire,
downward-turned look at these things,

but I think we want
to revisit his arguments,

not in terms of television,
but in terms of the internet.

And I would argue that whatever
is going on in World of Warcraft,

it's not bowling alone.

This group of people,
like the group of bowlers before,

is a community which has taken
mutual interest in each other,

extending beyond what's in the game
to larger parts of their lives.

This becomes a meeting point
and a place of exchange,

only it's an exchange
not rooted geographically,

but rooted on a global scale.

What we've seen is that games
are an enormous platform

for various forms of civic and political
activism

whether it's the Ron Paul movement
using World of Warcraft

to this massive protest that took place
in one of the multi-player games in China,

a protest
that probably couldn't take place

in physical space,
at least post-Tiananmen Square,

but can take place
in a virtual environment.

Games have become a platform
by which people are expressing

their political concerns.

This is part of a larger picture.

Many of you have seen the studies
that show that young people

get more of their information
about the world

through popular culture,
including comedy news shows like these

rather than
through traditional journalism.

And, as someone in a journalism department
who cares greatly about the future

of journalism, this worries me.

As someone who cares
about the future of civic engagement,

it doesn't worry me nearly as much,
because these shows often represent

alternative perspectives
that are not in the mainstream news.

They critique the frame of news.

They dig into the archive
and present images

and contextualize things in ways
that traditional news has not.

As platforms for thinking about the world,
they're doing really important work,

and they're a part of this larger way
in which the line

between participatory culture
and public participation

is starting to break down.

Now, this is not new.

Again, thinking historically, we can argue
that previous generations' ideas

about democracy were also shaped
by popular culture.

Here we see Norman Rockwell's covers
for Saturday Evening Post

and Frank Capra's
Mr. Smith Goes to Washington,

as earlier forms of popular culture
that taught people things about democracy.

It embedded the logic of democracy
into the practices of their everyday life.

And, we can go backwards and forwards
in time,

forwards to rock music
and underground comics,

backwards to the Tea Party,
the original Tea Party,

where people were playing dress-up
and dumping tea in the harbor,

building on carnivalesque traditions
from old Europe.

And, we can go forward
to the present moment

where, in fact, we're seeing
the mobilization of participatory culture

by groups like Move On
around the Obama campaign,

and to sort of think about
where did the people get the skills

that allowed them to produce videos
for Obama that circulated on YouTube?

And, in many cases, it may have been
people learning

how to film themselves skateboarding.

It may have been gamers using machinima.

It could have been any number
of popular culture,

participatory culture practices
that taught them their skills.

Just as in a hunting society, we play
with bows and arrows,

in an information society, we play
with information.

In a mediated culture, we play with media,
and that play, in fact,

becomes a powerful form of teaching.

Now, that play is now being harnessed
by new kinds of political organizations,

like this one: The Harry Potter Alliance.

The founder, a 20-something
named Andrew Slack,

starts with the premise
that Harry Potter is the story

of a young man who questioned authority
and changed the world,

that he lived in a world
where the newspapers lied

about what was happening.

The government refused
to acknowledge real problems,

and his school suppressed
political speech,

but he organized his classmates
into the Dumbledore's Army

and went out and changed the world.

That's a powerful image
for young activists.

So, if we had a Dumbledore's Army today,
what would they do?

Who would they work with?

And, he works with both fan groups,
like wizard rock groups.

This is Harry and the Potters.

He works with free press
and Amnesty International.

He's organized around human rights issues,
around worker rights issues,

around gay marriage.

Most recently, he wrote me this morning
to say they'd raised enough money

to support 3 cargo planes to Haiti,
named Hermione, Harry, and Ron.

(Laughter)

They're delivering supplies down there
to make a difference in that community.

He's got now 100,000 young people
around the world who are involved

in civic activism in the name
of Harry Potter,

a pretty remarkable set of developments.

We're seeing that popular culture leads
to new kinds of political awareness.

This group, AANG Ain't White,
now known as Racebender,

organized in response to the filming
of a version of Nickelodeon's show,

Last Airbender, in which all
of the people of color were recast

by white actors.

And, they've organized to call attention
to the whitewashing of characters,

the sort of racial politics of casting.

This has extended from a focus
on one anime series

to a whole variety of issues.

And, these are teenagers and young adults
educating themselves.

about race in America.

It can come right through your door.

This is a group called
The Living Room Rock Gods,

who try to duplicate the keyboard skills,
the drumming skills

of their favorite rock performers,
put it out on YouTube.

But, predictably enough, if they
get close enough to the original,

the technology tries
to see if they're pirating

and shuts them down.

It's a point of pride,
but also a point of anger.

So, they've organized this group,
Tribute is not Theft, to call attention

to the politics of copyright,
take-down notices, and so forth.

This is a more traditional group,
Invisible Children.

It's an activist group concerned
with Uganda, but it's taking the language

of popular culture, participatory culture,
and works to engage young people

with political change.

So, it borrows from Michael Jackson,
from High School Musical,

from reality television.

It produces what Stephen Duncombe
would call ethical spectacles

that are participatory, transparent,
playful, but mobilize people

on an ongoing basis, not just to give
their time and money,

but to actively engage in a relationship
with the developing world.

Now, we've seen signs of the start
to leak out of this.

This image up here of the Joker Obama
originated on a site in a community

called 4chan that, in fact,
just spit out lots of variants

on the Joker tied
to different political figures.

For them, it was a game.
Can we make mimes?

Can we spread them out
to a larger population?

This one got picked up, has been
on the national news.

It's sort of become a rallying point
for conservatives in America.

But, what it does is translate politics
through a language of popular culture.

It gets us out
of the policy wonk discourse

and into something that's
much more engaged

with things people already know
and care about.

Now, what comes around goes around.

We can see during the campaign
that supporters had depicted McCain

as the Penguin and Obama as Batman.

We've seen that there were images
during the campaign

that made Obama into Spock. (Laughter)

We've seen that the comic book world
has connected Obama in a variety of ways

to the figure of the superhero. (Laughter)

And, we see that, in fact, Obama himself
has sort of played around (Laughter)

with that analogy.

So, the language of the superhero,
of comics, and of science fiction

has become a way that we make sense
of our fanboy-in-chief. (Laughter)

Now, this is the global phenomenon.

Some of you saw the other day in the news
a protest march in Palestine

where people dressed up like the Na'vi
from Avatar.

And, in fact, across many parts
of the world, there have been already

protest marches similar to this one
where people paint themselves blue.

On Twitter, we paint ourselves green,
but it's more or less the same thing.

It's the idea of using the language
of James Cameron's films to speak back

to power.

This is a protest march in Singapore
where there are prohibitions

on public gatherings, and so people came
one by one

and plopped down an action figure
to stand in for them

as a figure of protest.

And, that over there, believe it or not,
is a rally about Pop Idol in India.

Around the world, we've seen Pop Idol
become a centerpiece for debates

about democracy.

I hear a lot about more young people voted
for American Idol than voted

in the last election.

Not true, by the way. More votes cast.
But, if you could speed-dial

in the last election and vote
as many times as you wanted,

there would've been a lot more votes
in American politics. (Laughter)

But, what's interesting is that,
around the world, Pop Idol has become

a franchise that sparks debates
about democracy.

So, why hasn't it happened here?

That may say more about our culture
than it says about the franchise.

So, where does that leave us?

These groups are mobilizing
skills kids have,

knowledge they care about,
passions they have toward new causes.

But, our schools are locking out
many of these practices.

Our schools are turning down Wikipedia,
shutting off YouTube,

blocking social network sites.

And, this, I think, is a challenge
for those of us in this room.

If we think what I described here works
on an organizational level

to mobilize citizenship, shouldn't we
bring it into our classrooms?

So, I end there.

(Applause)