Spreadable Media. Henry Jenkins
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Tea Party found particular resonance in the image of Obama as the antisocial Joker. Within 4Chan, memes serve as themes for ongoing conversations and fodder for creative activity, with each variation demonstrating and requiring particular cultural knowledge. Much as 4Chan hijacked images from Christopher Nolan’s movie, the Tea Party poached these images from 4Chan, changing their political valances yet again. All of this suggests the ways that the appropriation, remixing, and recirculation of content via the mechanisms of participatory culture are increasingly impacting conversations far removed from what once might have been seen as niche communities. As this happens, we are seeing the erosion of traditional boundaries—between fans and activists, creativity and disruption, niche and mainstream in the 4Chan example, or between commercial and grassroots, fan and producer in some of the examples we will consider later in this section.
This book will suggest a range of groups who are strongly motivated to produce and circulate media materials as parts of their ongoing social interactions, among them activists who seek to change public perceptions of an issue of concern to the group; religious groups who seek to spread “the Word”; supporters of the arts—especially of independent media—who seek to build a base to bolster alternative forms of cultural expression; enthusiasts for particular brands that have become signposts for people’s identities and lifestyles; bloggers who seek to engage others about the needs of local communities; collectors and retro audiences seeking greater access to residual materials; members of subcultures seeking to construct alternative identities; and so forth.
In particular, we will frequently use entertainment fandom as a reference point because fans groups have often been innovators in using participatory platforms to organize and respond to media texts. As early as the mid-nineteenth century, amateur publishers began to print newsletters about shared interests and to circulate them across the country, ultimately leading to the formation of the Amateur Press Association (Petrik 1992). The rise of science fiction fandom in the 1920s and 1930s (Ross 1991) built on this foundation, representing one of the most prominent and enduring examples of organized fan communities. Television fandom, in turn, has provided a supportive context through which many women, excluded from the male-only club that science fiction fandom had largely become, could develop their skills and hone their talents. By the 1970s, many women were remixing television footage to create their own fanvids, writing and editing their own zines, creating elaborate costumes, singing original folk songs, and painting images, all inspired by their favorite television series (Bacon-Smith 1992; Jenkins 1992; Coppa 2008). With the rise of networked computing, these fan communities did important work, providing their female participants with access to new skills and technologies as their members took their first steps into cyberspace, reversing early conceptions about the gendering of digital culture as a space only for masculine mastery. In particular, female fans were early adopters of social network technologies such as LiveJournal and Dreamwith, using the resources offered by new media technologies (podcasting, mp3s, video-sharing sites) to create their own distinctive forms of participatory culture.
These types of communities have embraced new technologies as they emerged, particularly when such tools offered them new means of social and cultural interactions. Rather than looking at platforms such as YouTube and Twitter as “new,” we consider these sites where multiple existing forms of participatory culture—each with its own historical trajectory, some over a century old—come together, which is part of what makes such platforms so complex to study. The popularity of Twitter, for instance, was driven by how efficiently the site facilities the types of resource sharing, conversation, and coordination that communities have long engaged in. The site’s early success owes little to official brand presence; big-name entertainment properties, companies, and celebrities began flocking to the microblogging platform only after its success was considered buzzworthy (a few exceptional early adopters notwithstanding, of course). Launched at the 2007 South by Southwest Interactive festival, a favorite event for people in media-related industries, Twitter quickly enabled individual marketers to build their personal brands, to connect with one another, to demonstrate their social networking abilities, and to share their “thought leadership.” Marketers, advertisers, and public relations professionals constituted a good portion of the early professionals using the site at a time when the rules of marketing were rapidly changing and a new crop of professionals were cementing their status and demonstrating their prowess in the “digital era.”
The same year Twitter launched, so too did Mad Men, AMC’s multi-Emmy-award-winning series about 1960s advertising agency Sterling Cooper. Mad Men celebrates what many people consider a “golden era” of U.S. mass marketing. The series serves as both a retrospective on the broadcast era and an exploration of another time in marketing when the rules were in flux and new advertising practices were developing around an increasingly important new media form (in this case, television).
It almost seems inevitable now that Twitter would prove a natural extension for the drama of Mad Men. Since season one, ad man Don Draper and fellow Sterling Cooper employees Pete Campbell, Joan Holloway, and Roger Sterling (or, rather, someone performing their identities) had been providing advice to readers through a Tumblr blog. However, on August 12, 2008, in the midst of the series’s second season, Draper showed up on Twitter, gaining several thousand followers in a few days. Soon, Pete, Joan, Roger, and almost the full cast of Mad Men characters arrived. During and between episodes, their followers could watch the characters interact and even join conversations with them. Some wholly new creations began to appear in the Twitter/Mad Men narrative as well, including Sterling Cooper mailroom employee Bud Melman and the office’s Xerox copy machine.
The Mad Men characters on Twitter were often playful and self-referential. Despite the obvious questions about how characters from the 1960s were using a modern communication platform, why they would share personal thoughts publicly, or how a Xerox machine could tweet, the interaction largely fit within the parameters of the show’s storyline, deepening engagement with existing stories rather than challenging the narrative or taking it in new directions. Some tweets referenced facts the audience knew but most characters didn’t, such as the closeted homosexuality of art director Sal. Others alluded to contemporary political events in relation to developments on the show, such as the rise to prominence of Joe “the plumber” Wurzelbacher as the quintessential middle-class citizen during the 2008 U.S. presidential election (King 2009).
A growing number of high-profile bloggers, especially in the fan and brand spheres, praised AMC’s marketing prowess. This praise was somewhat misdirected, however: as it turned out, the tweeting Mad Men (like their Tumblr forebears) were not affiliated with AMC or the show. Instead, fans of the show had inhabited the identities of favorite characters. As the popularity of these virtual versions of Mad Men’s characters escalated, AMC contacted Twitter to ascertain who was behind the accounts. Twitter interpreted this inquiry as a copyright challenge from AMC and suspended several user accounts, under the guise of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, on August 26, 2008, about two weeks after Draper’s first tweet.
Twitter’s suspension of the accounts fit a narrative that media fans and marketers alike knew well. Cease-and-desist orders have become an all-too-familiar means of correspondence between brands and their audiences in an era when prohibitionist corporate attitudes have collided with the collaborative nature of online social networks. There was immediate outcry against AMC for disrespecting its fans, pointing out that this activity had become an engine for generating interest and deepening engagement in a niche cable show with high critical praise but underwhelming ratings.
Part of AMC’s ambivalence about Mad Men’s Twitter popularity was likely driven by marketers’ uncertainty about ceding control, in some ways paralleling Mad Men creator Matthew Weiner’s own reputation as a self-professed “control freak” who “approves every actor, costume, hairstyle and prop” (Witchel 2008). Weiner’s reputation for tight control has extended beyond careful monitoring of the production; he has spoken out vehemently against ways of viewing or experiencing the show of which he disapproves. Says Weiner, “I met this guy who was creating software where you could watch Mad Men and you could chat with your friend while you’re watching it, and things would pop up, and facts would pop up, and I said, ‘You’re a human battery. Turn the fucking thing off! You’re not allowed to watch the show anymore. You’re missing the