Two Quotes for Today

For the first part of class today, I want us to consider two quotes from the Henry Jenkins book Convergence Culture.

The first one actually is from historian Michael Schudson who is quoted in the book on page 226. Schudson says:

Monitorial citizens tend to be defensive rather than pro-active... The
monitorial citizen engages in environmental surveillance more than
information-gathering. Picture parents watching small children at the community
pool. They are not gathering information; they are keeping an eye on the scene.
They look inactive, but they are poised for action if action is required. The
monitorial citizen is not an absentee citizen but watchful, even while he or she
is doing something else... [They] are perhaps better informed than citizens of
the past in that, somewhere in their heads, [while] they have more bits of
information, there is no assurance that they know at all what to do with what
they know.

That is an interesting comment and something Andrew Shelffo should be able to talk about first hand today.

The other quote comes from the very end of Convergence Culture. Jenkins writes:

Welcome to convergence culture, where old and new media collide, where
grassroots and corporate media intersect, where the power of the media producer
and the power of the media consumer interact in unpredictable ways. Convergence
culture is the future, but it is taking shape now. Consumers will be more
powerful within convergence culture -- but only if they recognize and use that
power as both consumers and citizens, as full participants in our culture.

A pretty powerful ending and a call to action. What do you think?