“Critical pessimists, such as media critics Mark Crispin Miller, Noam Chomsky, and Robert McChesney, focus primarily on the obstacles to achieving a more democratic society. In the process, they often exaggerate the power of big media in order to frighten readers into taking action. I don't disagree with their concern about media concentration, but the way they frame the debate is self-defeating insofar as it disempowers consumers even as it seeks to mobilize them. Far too much media reform rhetoric rests on melodramatic discourse about victimization and vulnerability, seduction and manipulation, "propaganda machines" and "weapons of mass deception". Again and again, this version of the media reform movement has ignored the complexity of the public's relationship to popular culture and sided with those opposed to a more diverse and participatory culture. The politics of critical utopianism is founded on a notion of empowerment; the politics of critical pessimism on a politics of victimization. One focuses on what we are doing with media, and the other on what media is doing to us. As with previous revolutions, the media reform movement is gaining momentum at a time when people are starting to feel more empowered, not when they are at their weakest.” RevolutionEmpowermentOptimismMedia Studies Book:Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide Source: Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide
“The worst thing a kid can say about homework is that it is too hard. The worst thing a kid can say about a game is it's too easy.” GamesLearningStudentsHomeworkVideo Games Author:Henry Jenkins
“You can think about Robin Hood as a classic poacher, who steals from the rich and gives to the poor. And, essentially, what I see taking place in fandom is that process, where we steal the cultural resources that belong to the networks and we remake them, to speak to what we as fans want them to be, be they concerns as women, or racial concerns, sexual politics questions or whatever. That‘s what I think happens most of the time, when people are engaged in fan writing, in one way or another.” Cultural StudiesFandomAnticapitalismFanfictionFanFan Studies Author:Henry Jenkins
“What do Fans produce? Fans produce meanings and interpretations; fans produce art-works; fans produce communities; fans produce alternative Identities. In each case, fans are drawing on materials from the dominant media and employing them in ways that serve their own interests and facilitate their own pleasures.” FansCultural StudiesAcademic WritingFan StudiesFandon Author:Henry Jenkins