1. Cultural value of Television
1.1. Broadcast era
1.1.1. Elihu Katz
1.1.1.1. Television is a technology providing several audiovisual channels of over-the-air broadcasting, publicly regulated as a near-monopoly charged to “inform, educate, and entertain”, and characterized by national audiences dispersed in their homes.
1.1.2. John Ellis
1.1.2.1. Viewers knew the television of “scarcity,” in which choice was limited to a very few over-the-air channels that broadcast to families and to a 'unified nation'.
1.2. Network era
1.2.1. Newman & Levine
1.2.1.1. The dominant view of television was as a waste of time and possibly also a source of widespread social problems. Television was often considered as an medium with a lack in artistic value.
1.2.1.2. 1970s-1980s: Fragmentation of the audience made for opportunities to produce 'quality TV shows' to direct programming at sophisticated niches.
1.2.2. John Ellis
1.2.2.1. Television of “plenty,”. When satellite and cable competed for the audience's attention, choice was suddenly expanded, and every room in the home had its own TV set.
1.3. Convergence era (present)
1.3.1. Henry Jenkins
1.3.1.1. Convergence represents a move from medium-specific content toward content that flows across multiple media channels, toward the increased interdepence of communications systems, toward multiple ways of accessing media content.
1.3.2. Elihu Katz
1.3.2.1. Television has moved from a “collectivist” to an “individualist” phase. The family has disappeared into separate rooms, and the nation no longer comes together except for the rare live broadcast of a disaster or a celebration.
2. Audience participation
2.1. Fan communities
2.1.1. Liesbet van Zoonen
2.1.1.1. Fans have an intense individual investment in the text, they participate in strong communal discussions and deliberations about the qualities of the text, they propose and discuss alternatives which would be implemented as well if only the fans could have their way.
2.1.2. Brough & Shresthova
2.1.2.1. Fans are typically understood to be individuals who engage deeply with, and often assert their identity through, popular culture content. Fan activities commonly include writing or producing pop-culture related content such as fan fiction or remixed videos ("vids"), self-publishing analyses of media content, role-playing, and organizing conventions or other fan group activities. Groups of individuals constitute a fandom through interest-driven affiliations, forming a sense of collective or subcultural identity around shared tastes.
2.1.3. Daniel Dayan
2.1.3.1. Daniel Dayan observes a difference between ‘audiences’ and ‘publics’. He asks the question whether and according to which conditions television audiences could become publics. The two kinds of ‘almost publics’ he sees emerging from television are fan communities that are engaged in ‘make-believe subjects’ and publics that temporarily develop around media events.
2.1.4. Jodi Dean
2.1.4.1. Jodi Dean argues that the interactivity fostered by new media promotes a form of publicity without publics: a drive to advertise one’s own opinion that falls short of the political commitments of the public sphere. So, the self-organized audience groups as in TWoP is merely creating content for self-promotion and to be part of a community, apart from the media companies.
2.2. Active engagement with media texts
2.2.1. Vidding
2.2.1.1. Francesca Coppa
2.2.1.1.1. A grassroots art form called vidding, in which fans or 'vidders' reedit television or film into music videos called 'vids'. They contain a form of in-kind media criticism, where the vidder edited the footage in a way to emphasize a particular pattern in media that fits their argument.
2.2.2. Creative commons
2.2.2.1. Lawrence Lessig
2.2.2.1.1. Creative commons give creators ways to say: sample me, share me, copy me, liberate me, and together they restore something of balance in this debate. And this balance, we believe, will enable a different kind of creativity: creativity built upon a tradition of building upon the works of others, freely. A free culture, not the permission culture that our law has produced.
2.2.3. File-sharing
2.2.3.1. Michael Newman
2.2.3.1.1. Television file-sharing is a form of production that adds value to the text through productive labor in service of a popular culture community. File-sharing is based on peers from within a community, but this may extend beyond distribution and touch on production as well.
3. Monitorial citizenship
3.1. Political participation
3.1.1. Fan activism
3.1.1.1. Brough & Shresthova
3.1.1.1.1. Fan activism is a form of participatory culture in which contemporary dynamics of civic participation is being explored. The collective identity formation of fan communities result in collective action and therefore, fans can be regarded as monitorial citizens.
3.1.1.2. Liesbet van Zoonen
3.1.1.2.1. Although fan communities and citizenship show similarities in the way they produce and share knowledge, there is a difference in the way they operate. Fandoms merely operate on the basis of emotional capacity, while citizenship is characterized by cognitive information-processing. So, there is a discrepancy in the way fandom and citizenship engage with media (affective versus cognitive), yet show similarities in the way they operate within a community by producing and sharing knowledge, forming a consensus and striving for a change in the current cultural and/or political systems.
3.2. Media literacy
3.2.1. Brough & Shresthova
3.2.1.1. The behaviors and skill sets include developing communication infrastructures and practices within fan communities, online networking among groups with shared interests and self-publication in dialogue with popular content worlds.
3.2.2. Critical utopianism
3.2.2.1. Henry Jenkins
3.2.2.1.1. The politics of critical utopianism is founded on a notion of empowerment, it focuses on what we are doing with media. Right now, convergence culture is being drawn toward the importance of media literacy education. Jenkins argues that more focus should be placed on the possibilities of participation and in expanding skills at deploying media for one’s own ends. He proposes the need for media literacy education which means a new field of knowledge exists that humans have to learn about and teach to future children.
3.2.2.2. Pierre Levy
3.2.2.2.1. Emerging power to participate serves as a strong corrective to those traditional sources of power, though they will also seek ways to turn it toward their own ends. We are just learning how to exercise that power—individually and collectively.
4. Media regulations
4.1. Relations between top-down corporate media and bottom-up participatory culture
4.1.1. Top-down corporate media
4.1.1.1. Commercial intertextuality
4.1.1.1.1. Henry Jenkins
4.1.1.1.2. Jonathan Hardy
4.1.2. Bottom-up or snowball participatory culture
4.1.2.1. Collective intelligence
4.1.2.1.1. Pierre Levy
4.1.2.2. Fandoms or fan communities
4.1.2.2.1. Henry Jenkins
4.1.3. Free labor
4.1.3.1. Tizinia Terranova
4.1.3.1.1. "The social factory": the process whereby work processes have shifted from the factory to society, thereby setting in motion a truly complex machine.
4.1.3.2. Mark Andrejevic
4.1.3.2.1. The notion of "the social factory" coincides with the creation of an interavtive consumer-viewer, prepared to devote time and energy to developing the skills necessary to participate in the interactive media economy.
4.1.3.3. Jonathan Hardy
4.1.3.3.1. Media companies use transmedia to promote a TV show that wants audience groups to engage within the storyworld of a particular franchise, so that they participate and create content which the companies can ‘use’ in their marketing strategies. Audience activity generated from corporate promotions and marketing stunts happens within the organization of the industry, where media companies make use of content created by the audience without paying them a fee: “free labor”.
4.2. Transnational television
4.2.1. G. Kuipers
4.2.1.1. The TV industry should be understood as a transnational field in which the national and the international interact. As well as the trade in formats (and other types of TV programmes), professional practices, aesthetic standards and cultural forms are also exchanged. The television industry is thus simultaneously both local and global, also known as transnational.
4.2.2. Van Keulen & Krijnen
4.2.2.1. Localized features in TV shows are not intentionally incorporated by the producers, but rather a part of the adaptation process of a globalized show for a national audience. A major factor is the geographical location and the nature of the broadcaster being the primary elements. Transnational TV highlights these shows which cross the borders of localization and globalization.
4.2.3. Michael Newman
4.2.3.1. File-sharing has awakened and attuned audiences to the temporality of transnational media flows and made it less tenable to have lag times between airings in different countries, or lack of availability of legally legitimate online content.
4.3. Copyright
4.3.1. Creative Commons
4.3.1.1. Lawrence Lessig
4.3.1.1.1. With the appearance of the Internet, copyright laws are outdated and are in need of revision. Today’s copyright laws in media industries hinder individuals to freely reuse texts in order to create something unique online. By the use of creative commons, creators decide what other users may or may not use from their content.
4.3.2. Author- and ownership
4.3.2.1. Henry Jenkins
4.3.2.1.1. Transmedia further separates the interests of authors and owners of a storyworld, and as a result can reduce the authority of both.
4.3.2.2. Nancy Baym
4.3.2.2.1. The participants prove to be a highly competent audience expressing critical assessments of the show that often surpasses the knowledge of the producers. Some long-time fans feel they know the characters and their fictional community better than the writers and are struggling – as it were – with the writers about the ownership of the series.
5. Flow of Television
5.1. Technological
5.1.1. Fragmentation of media outlets
5.1.1.1. Transmedia storytelling
5.1.1.1.1. Henry Jenkins
5.1.1.1.2. Pierre Levy
5.1.1.2. Attention scarcity
5.1.1.2.1. Elihu Katz
5.1.1.2.2. John Ellis
5.1.1.2.3. Markus Prior
5.2. Socio-cultural
5.2.1. Mainstream media / homogenization
5.2.1.1. Van Keulen & Krijnen
5.2.1.1.1. Localized features in TV shows are not intentionally incorporated by the producers, but rather a part of the adaptation process of a globalized show for a national audience. When eliminating the differences in linguistics and local surroundings, the shows are similar because it is produced by an international media company. The glocalization of TV formats contributes tot the homogenous flow of mainstream media.
5.2.1.2. Michael Newman
5.2.1.2.1. P2P circulation of television content enables audiences to be exposed to media texts other than commercial mainstream content. The transnational flow of TV can more easily bypass official channels, as viewers interested in seeing series from abroad have fast and easy web access, and online fandoms congregate as global communities.
5.2.2. Common good or private good
5.2.2.1. Michael Newman
5.2.2.1.1. There has been a shift from media texts being seen as a private, owned good to a ‘common-based peer produced and distributed’ good. TV shows are now considered a freely accessible public good that is distributed by and for individuals online via file-sharing.
5.2.2.2. Henry Jenkins
5.2.2.2.1. Henry Jenkins argues that fan participation is a subversive form of "textual poaching"whereby “readers are considered ‘travelers’ who move across lands belonging to someone else, like nomads poaching their way across fields they did not write”. In this light, media texts are to be considered common good from which everyone can 'poach' from in order to create new texts.