Henry Jenkins is a professor who has authored or edited seventeen books on media and popular culture. He explores how fans actively engage with media texts by creating their own cultures and communities. The rise of new media has accelerated participatory culture where audiences are active participants rather than passive consumers by generating online content and solving problems collectively. For Jenkins, convergence is a cultural process rather than just a technological one, and he prefers the term "spreadable media" to emphasize the active role of audiences online.

2.  Henry Jenkins is the Provost
Professor of Communication,
Journalism, Cinematic Arts and
Education at the University of
Southern California.
 He is the author and/or editor of
seventeen books on various aspects of
media and popular culture,
including Textual Poachers:Television
Fans and Participatory Culture, Hop on
Pop:The Politics and Pleasures of
Popular Culture, From Barbie to Mortal
Kombat: Gender and Computer
Games, Convergence Culture: Where
Old and New Media Collide, Spreadable
Media: Creating Meaning andValue in a
Networked Culture, and By Any Media
Necessary:The NewYouth Activism.

3.  Fans take elements from media texts to create their own culture (think of the effect
that celebrity culture has on certain audiences, or the construction of identity through
music genres).
 The development of the ‘new’ media has accelerated ‘participatory culture’, in which
audiences are active and creative participants rather than passive consumers.
They create online communities, produce online content, collaborate to solve
problems, and shape the flow of media.This generates ‘collective intelligence’.
 From this perspective, convergence is a cultural process rather than a technological
one.
 Jenkins prefers the term ‘spreadable media’ to terms such as ‘viral’, as the former
emphasises the active, participatory element of the ‘new’ media.

4.  Draws attention to the potentially revolutionary effect of online media on news and the threat this
represents to traditional models of news gathering and distribution.
 Draws attention to how online newspapers increasingly rely on participatory mediasuch as Facebook,
Instagram, andTwitter to disseminate news.
 Draws attention to the role of amateur producers in citizen journalism (grassroots journalism).
 Online newspapers have not embraced the ‘publish then filter’ model of the new media as top newspaper
brands rely on their authority as a news brand to sell themselves, so this theory explains less about online
newspapers than it would for fully user-generated online content.
 This optimistic view of the power of amateur producers may underestimate the power of the oligarchy of
media conglomerates to shape and control online content and the importance of journalism as a
professional practice.