Pop Convergence

Pop Convergence explores the dynamic and fascinating history of Manila's entertainment industry at the turn of the twenty-first century. Taking a close look at the production and reception of popular media, author James Gabrillo offers fascinating insights through the use of archival recordings, close readings of multimedia, and multi-sited ethnographic fieldwork, including dozens of interviews with artists, producers, critics, and audiences.

This book observes and analyzes transnational interactions of East Asian pop culture and current cultural practices, comparing them to the production and consumption of Western popular culture and providing a theoretical discussion regarding the specific paradigm of East Asian pop culture. Drawing on innovative theoretical perspectives and grounded empirical research, an international team of authors consider the history of transnational flows within pop culture and then systematically address pop culture,digital technologies, and the media industry. Chapters cover the Hallyu—or Korean Wave—phenomenon, as well as Japanese and Chinese cultural industries. Throughout the book, the authors address the convergence of the once-separated practical, industrial, and business aspects of popular culture under the influence of digital culture. They further coherently synthesize a vast collection of research to examine the specific realities and practices of consumers that exist beyond regional boundaries, shared cultural identities, and historical constructs. This book will be of interest to academic researchers, undergraduates, and graduate students of Asian media, media studies, communication studies, cultural studies, transcultural communication, or sociology.

This book investigates new enabling technologies for Fi-Wi convergence. The editors discuss Fi-Wi technologies at the three major network levels involved in the path towards convergence: system level, network architecture level, and network management level. The main topics will be: a. At system level: Radio over Fiber (digitalized vs. analogic, standardization, E-band and beyond) and 5G wireless technologies; b. Network architecture level: NGPON, WDM-PON, BBU Hotelling, Cloud Radio Access Networks (C-RANs), HetNets. c. Network management level: SDN for convergence, Next-generation Point-of-Presence, Wi-Fi LTE Handover, Cooperative MultiPoint.

Pop Culture for Beginners promotes reflective engagement with the world around us and provides a set of tools for thinking critically about how meaning is created, reinforced, and circulated. Privileging a semiotic approach, the book’s first part, “The Pop Culture Toolbox,” outlines the development of pop culture studies; explains the semiotic framework; introduces students to a variety of critical lenses including Marxism, feminism, postcolonialism, and Critical Race Theory; and then offers an overview of several pop culture “pivot points” including authenticity, convergence culture, intersectionality, intertextuality, and subculture. The book’s second part provides a series of units, prepared in consultation with subject area experts, built around topics central to popular culture studies: television and film, music, comics, gaming, social media, and fandom. Each chapter includes “Your Turn” activities and discussion questions, as well as possible assignments and suggestions for further reading. The unit chapters in part two also include enabling questions as beginning points for thinking critically and sample readings demonstrating relevant scholarly approaches to popular culture; important vocabulary terms throughout are included in a substantive glossary at the end.

This book focuses on how everyday media such as Facebook, iTunes and Google can be understood in new ways for the 21st century through ideas of convergence. Key chapters explore the development of the internet, the rise of social media and the new opportunities for audiences to create, collaborate upon and share their own media.

Winner of the 2007 Society for Cinema and Media Studies Katherine Singer Kovacs Book Award 2007 Choice Outstanding Academic Title A classic study on the dynamic between an individual and different media channels Convergence Culture maps a new territory: where old and new media intersect, where grassroots and corporate media collide, where the power of the media producer and the power of the consumer interact in unpredictable ways. Henry Jenkins, one of America’s most respected media analysts, delves beneath the new media hype to uncover the important cultural transformations that are taking place as media converge. He takes us into the secret world of Survivor Spoilers, where avid internet users pool their knowledge to unearth the show’s secrets before they are revealed on the air. He introduces us to young Harry Potter fans who are writing their own Hogwarts tales while executives at Warner Brothers struggle for control of their franchise. He shows us how The Matrix has pushed transmedia storytelling to new levels, creating a fictional world where consumers track down bits of the story across multiple media channels.Jenkins argues that struggles over convergence will redefine the face of American popular culture. Industry leaders see opportunities to direct content across many channels to increase revenue and broaden markets. At the same time, consumers envision a liberated public sphere, free of network controls, in a decentralized media environment. Sometimes corporate and grassroots efforts reinforce each other, creating closer, more rewarding relations between media producers and consumers. Sometimes these two forces are at war. Jenkins provides a riveting introduction to the world where every story gets told and every brand gets sold across multiple media platforms. He explains the cultural shift that is occurring as consumers fight for control across disparate channels, changing the way we do business, elect our leaders, and educate our children.

'I'm going to camp out on the land ... try and get my soul free'. So sang Joni Mitchell in 1970 on 'Woodstock'. But Woodstock is only the tip of the iceberg. Popular music festivals are one of the strikingly successful and enduring features of seasonal popular cultural consumption for young people and older generations of enthusiasts. From pop and rock to folk, jazz and techno, under stars and canvas, dancing in the streets and in the mud, the pleasures and politics of the carnival since the 1950s are discussed in this innovative and richly-illustrated collection. The Pop Festival brings scholarship in cultural studies, media studies, musicology, sociology, and history together in one volume to explore the music festival as a key event in the cultural landscape - and one of major interest to young people as festival-goers themselves and as students.