Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide

Henry Jenkins at Authors@Google (video)

Winner of the 2007 Society for Cinema and Media Studies Katherine Singer Kovacs Book Award

2007 Choice Outstanding Academic Title

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.

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Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide

Here's how e-cigarette vendors promote culture of 'vaping' online

As per a recent study, online e-cigarette vendors engage customers by using popular internet tools.First introduced in the United States in 2007, electronic cigarettes have risen dramatically in part because they are popularly considered safer and more socially acceptable than combustible cigarettes and because there are fewer restrictions on their purchase and use.The University of California study by San Diego School of Medicine researchers points to aggressive online marketing tactics that make purchasing e-cigarettes easy for all ages.First author Tim K. Mackey said that they found e-cigarette vendors were highly engaged in promoting the culture of ‘vaping’ online, including posting images to Instagram, a social media site used by 52 percent of teens.Mackey added that despite the fact that 47 states prohibit the sale of e-cigarettes to minors, the results highlight the potential of the Internet to encourage e-cigarette initiation and underage purchasing. This is particularly concerning given that the FDA does not have specific proposed regulations for online e-cigarette sales.Data from the 2014 National Youth Tobacco Survey shows that e-cigarette use tripled among middle and high school students from 2013 to 2014.Researchers found that 68 percent of the 57 online e-cigarette vendors they studied displayed one or more health warnings about the devices on their website. However, the notices were often depicted in smaller fonts or placed discretely in the terms and conditions section of a website.One third of the vendors had no detectable age verification process for buyers and of those that did, most required only a simple click to say the buyer was within the legal age limit. Industry analysts estimate that online sales comprise 25 to 30 percent of the $2 billion annual e-cigarette market, which may account for a high presence of vendors on social media, said Mackey, who is also associate director of the joint master’s degree in Health Policy and Law.The study found that online e-cigarette vendors use a variety of sophisticated and aggressive marketing practices, including promotional offers and high social media engagement to promote the sale of their products, said Mackey.Mackey and team reported that 70 percent of the online vendors used more than one of the three most commonly used social media platforms: 63 percent used Twitter, 52 percent posted to Facebook and 42 percent were on Instagram.The researchers said the findings could impact the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s 2014 proposed regulations of e-cigarette use, sale, marketing and manufacturing to include online monitoring of the laws.The study is published in the journal Drug and Alcohol Dependence.

Here"s how e-cigarette vendors promote culture of "vaping" online

The Culture of Connectivity: A Critical History of Social Media

Social media penetrate our lives: Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and many other platforms define daily habits of communication and creative production. This book studies the rise of social media, providing both a historical and a critical analysis of the emergence of major platforms in the context of a rapidly changing ecosystem of connective media. Author José van Dijck offers an analytical prism that can be used to view techno-cultural as well as socio-economic aspects of this transformation as well as to examine shared ideological principles between major social media platforms. This fascinating study will appeal to all readers interested in social media.

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The Culture of Connectivity: A Critical History of Social Media

Lift Division has a culture of change

The vibrant, glossy offices at Lift Division reflect the type of cool, adaptive and modern atmosphere the company emanates. The people at Lift Division are masters of change; their entire careers revolve around the constantly shifting digital landscape. The company itself has also been evolving since its establishment in

2010 and has undergone new management, new offices and offers new products and services.

Five years ago, Jamie Stephens, Josh Burrell and Travis Smith created the company Lift Division, which had a main focus of Web development and search marketing. In 2011 and 2012, there was an increasing emphasis at Lift Division on SEO and search marketing, and co-founder Stephens, who had more expertise in Web and product development, left the company to pursue freelance opportunities with larger clients.

In early 2013, entrepreneur Rusty Brett purchased Lift Division. Brett’s own startup ServiceNoodle.com had been one of Lift Division’s first clients. By merging the ServiceNoodle.com and Lift Division teams, Brett created a group of people with large differentiation of expertise, and Lift Division became the parent digital agency entity.

“I was always kind of trying to woo Jamie [Stephens] back over to Lift because our expertise in Web development was sites under $20,000,” says Brett, Lift Division CEO. “We had incredible SEO, search and content marketing experience, but we needed that person that could help us create and execute comprehensive digital strategies for much larger clients.”

Stephens returned to Lift Division in February of 2015 as the chief of digital strategy, and as a result the company was able to begin executing larger projects.

“I saw the direction that Rusty and the team were going, and I knew I wanted to get back full time with Lift to help bring value to clients both locally and nationally,” Stephens says.

‘It’s our approach’

Currently, Lift Division facilitates business growth, audience engagement and customer retention through inbound marketing techniques, including: SEO, content marketing, web design, app development, PPC, social marketing, PR reputation management, email marketing and video marketing.

“It’s not necessarily our products, but it’s our approach”, Stephens says. “Coming in and working with our clients in a design-centric way and a customer-centric way, our goal is to help them understand and refine what their vision is and then develop engagement strategies.”

Lift Division strongly believes in showing clients that their services provide actual value to their companies, which typically means growth in sales and other key performance indicators.

“All of our strategies are measurable and actionable,” Stephens says. “It’s super important for us to be able to show our customers that we’re doing something for them. It’s not just a glossy website but that their website is actually working for them.”

As Lift Division hires more people with different skills, the products and services it offers expand as well. The company prides themselves on being able to handle a lot of its marketing in house and being able to serve as a comprehensive solution for clients.

“There’s a lot of products we offer right now, and we want to focus on doing all of those even better,” Stephens says. “That’s a big part of it: finding new ways to deliver the same product with new tools and new systems in place to deliver results better for our customers. We’re not a cookie cutter agency; we want to make sure that we’re delivering the right strategies and the right tools for each one of our customers.”

Education and change

A challenge for the company is being able to keep up with the continually changing technology. As technology changes, so do the rules of the game, and sometimes it can be hard to keep up.

“The industry is in constant change, especially when you talk about how search results are displayed,” Brett says. “Everyone always goes back to Google, and Google is constantly changing. For example, starting April 21 Google is going to start penalizing sites that aren’t mobile responsive. That’s one of the constant challenges in the digital marketing space: to keep up with the times and help our clients adjust to the newest technology accordingly.”

According to Brett and Stephens, Lift Division puts a large emphasis on educating its clients on how it can keep their businesses up to speed when it comes to technology and how to make sense of the cluttered, chaotic Internet world.

“There are so many opportunities to try and spread your message between all the social media outlets; there’s so much chatter and so much noise,” Brett says. “You really need to pick one or two [social media sites] and focus on those really well as opposed to getting lost in all the opportunities.”

Since the company was established, Lift Division’s customer base has reached beyond Columbia. Lift Division has clients in Vancouver, New York, Atlanta and Denver. It has worked with major brands such as the U.S. Army and Gotham Culture. The company’s customer base largely consists of small to mid-size businesses, with one or two larger projects going on at the same time. Although Lift Division has been working on numerous national projects, the company wants to continue to help local businesses grow by educating them.

“Education is a big piece of what we want to do,” Stephens says. “There are a lot of things businesses can do themselves to help lift their brand and lift their engagement with customers, and we want that information as accessible as possible.”

Lift Division has been through many changes since 2010, and that’s what the company thrives on: a culture of change. The company is thriving in an industry filled with complexities and uncertainties, and it feeds off the opportunity to help businesses adapt, just like it has.

“As a company we try and develop a culture of change and being nimble,” Stephens says. “What we’re doing today to help businesses grow could be completely different in two years, but if we can build a culture of change, and we can have people that are able to be nimble and able to adapt to change, we’re always going to be able to deliver winning strategies and winning solutions to our customers.”

Lift Division has a culture of change