Henry Jenkins – Midpoint Summary

So far, we have explored Henry Jenkins’ definition of “fan culture” from their book Convergence Culture (2006), finding that fans of a given text, in this case Star Trek, may produce their own stories for circulation on fan sites, and before the internet “fanzines”, which act as an “underground economy” separate from the intellectual property owners. This enables fans to write stories which otherwise would not be published, rewriting certain aspects of a canon to satisfy their personal desires.

In Convergence Culture, Jenkins outlines how “The web provides a powerful new distribution channel for amateur cultural production” (2006, p. 131), and:

Today, the internet allows anyone to easily participate in this culture and as such, the length or quality of fanfiction varies dramatically with much of it attributed to the author’s screen name, instead of their real name.

With studios taking their texts into new eras, such as Disney “refreshing” the official Star Wars cannon, it would be interesting to see if a new era of fanfiction will occur within this underground economy too, with stories around a new canon being developed, and if the discussions and tips on writing your own fanfiction aren’t as readily available, if fanfiction has seen a decline in quality or quantity since.

Having discussed fan culture within the context of Star Trek, this series will now move onto Jenkins’ concept of “transmedia storytelling” using Doctor Who (Davies et. al., 2005-2022) as a case study.