Jenkins Theory (Katie)

Jenkins' key ideas:

Fans/fandom- group of people showing their love for a particular thing,e.g. a film. Fandom = community (more active)
Knowledge communities- places where fans can meet online and share their knowledge of their subject also brings into play the idea of cultural capital to understand the 'knowledge', e.g. forums, fan-sites.
Collective thinking- the sets of rules; what can and can't be said on fan-sites, how they often have a hierarchy but are still self-governed.
Transmedia- different forms of the film produced by fans, e.g. fanfiction, parodies, fanart
Social and cultural convergence- when fans come together socially and form their own culture. Web 2.0 has facilitated this and made it happen on a large scale.
Cultural production-When fans make fan-made products to share online, i.e. the end product.

Beasts of No Nation: Production with Netflix

Wish I Was Here: Crowdfunding on Kickstarter

Piracy and the Music Industry

Piracy2 from smiley2014

How Music Artists Promote Themselves On Social Media (Taylor Swift)

Taylor swift promotion on social networking from smiley2014

YouTube, Mike Wesch and Vloggers

Youtubemikewesch from smiley2014

An Anthropological Introduction to YouTube- Mike Wesch

Erving Goffman- The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life

Goffman proposes the idea that we change our behaviour in different situations in order to achieve our goals/ aims.

Goffman distinguishes between:

Front Stage Behaviour- How we act in public to different groups of people in different scenarios, for example, whilst at work we would create a 'front' which conveys a positive and professional image which differs from a laidback, calm image.

Back Stage Behaviour- How we act in private, where we are comfortable with ourselves and the people we are around. For example, at home with a close family member or friend. 

Examples of Front stage and Back stage behaviour can be applied to our behaviour on social networking. Whilst using sites such as Facebook, we can typically use our back stage behaviour online, which although may be more authentic, can also lead to issues with bullying and discomfort due to not conforming with mainstream behaviour. However, when updating a profile picture, we may use front stage behaviour as we conform to a typical front stage, where we upload a picture of ourselves.

Anthony Giddens Theory

Anthony Giddens

If the self is 'made', rather than inherited or just passively static, what form is it in? What is the thing that we make? Giddens says that in the post-traditional order, self-identity becomes a reflexive project - an endeavour that we continuously work and reflect on. We create, maintain and revise a set of biographical narratives - the story of who we are, and how we came to be where we are now.

Self-identity, then, is not a set of traits or observable characteristics. It is a person's own reflexive understanding of their biography. Self-identity has continuity - that is, it cannot easily be completely changed at will - but that continuity is only a product of the person's reflexive beliefs about their own biography (Giddens 1991: 53).

'A person's identity is not to be found in behaviour, nor - important though this is - in the reactions of others, but in the capacity to keep a particular narrative going. The individual's biography, if she is to maintain regular interaction with others in the day-to-day world, cannot be wholly fictive. It must continually integrate events which occur in the external world, and sort them into the ongoing 'story' about the self.' (Giddens 1991: 54).

The Power of Social Networking- Meningitis B Vaccine

Meningitis b vaccine from smiley2014

Instagram In My Everyday Life

Instagram in my every day life from smiley2014

The Long Tail- Explained by Another Teacher

The long tail from Media Studies

Chris Anderson's Theory: The Long Tail

Chris Anderson defined the Long Tail as an economic state where products have a longer sales pattern when they don't rely on shop storage because they're either sold online (Amazon). If you add up all the revenue from the Niche market films the profit can be greater or equal to the profit from one blockbuster of best selling product. Pre-broadband Niche products were hard to find and expensive to buy, now online shopping/ sharing makes it easy to cater for everyone's taste. 

An Amazon employee described the Long Tail as follows:We sold more books today that didn't sell at all yesterday than we sold today of all the books that didn't sell yesterday."

Chris Anderson's Theory applied to Spotify. 

The above graph shows that the revenue for Niche artists is considerably lower than the revenue for Heritage artists, in regards to Spotify, which disproves Anderson's claim that sales are increasing for Niche artists in the music industry.

However, on Spotify, there are 944 different genres, with thousands of different artists.
According to Spotify, with 20 million subscribers, a “niche/indie artist” could expect to generate $1.2m a year in Spotify payouts, while a “heritage artist” would generate $2.6m.

However:

'Chris Anderson was right that the falling cost of distribution has made more music available to consumers than ever before: most digital music services have catalogues of more than 20m tracks.' (Quote taken from the Financial Times)

The Great Levelling

Docmentary: The Great Levelling

BBC.The.Virtual.Revolution.1of4.The.Great... by turdlok

Universal Music Group

The Music Industry in the Past