Had Henry Jenkins written his chapter “Photoshop for Democracy: The New Relationship Between Politics and Political Culture” a few year later, his argument would have had a particularly strong appeal to anyone participating in the 2008 election. Since becoming more familiar with social media, games, and, yes, even politics while reading Jenkins, Ian Bogost, and James Paul Gee, I’m aware of the ways that media convergence and participatory culture have come together to create a unique new way of taking part in politics.
Jenkins begins his chapter by addressing the content of this chapter. He writes, “I am focusing here less on changes in institutions or laws, which are the focus of traditional political science, but more on changes in communications systems and cultural norms, which need to be understood through tools that have originated in the study of media and popular culture” (219). Jenkins was correct in noting that changes in laws and institutions have yet to take place due to this convergence culture as well as noting that media and popular culture would continue to play an important role in politics. The last election, which Jenkins missed by a few years, was marked by a number of interesting popular culture references that would have made this chapter of “Convergence Culture” a more interesting read. I will discuss a few of these soon.
One of the things I found most interesting about Jenkins book is that he discussed the Howard Dean election at length, and, despite Jenkins interested in media and convergence culture, he didn’t mention the importance of games in this particular election. Ian Bogost’s book “Persuasive Games: The Expressive Power of Videogames” discusses the role games had in this election extensively. Perhaps Jenkins wasn’t interested in games for this particular book, or perhaps Bogost was more informed (since he did take part in creating the Howard Dean game) than Jenkins. Either way, it’s interesting to look at the game in terms of convergence culture. One of the reasons I was confused that Jenkins didn’t include discussion of the Howard Dean for Iowa game is that both he and Bogost (as well as the other creators of the game) were/are interested in the importance of grassroots outreach. Furthermore, Bogost described games as “procedurally expressive; they embodied their commentary in their rules” (135). I would think that Jenkins would be interested in this because of his interest in the way our assimilation of knowledge seems to be changing.
Despite the fact that the Howard Dean game seemed to fail (he wasn’t elected), politics continues to be further intertwined with media and popular culture for that matter. The 2008 election campaign provided American with a potential Vice President that has become a pop culture icon: Sarah Palin. After she and McCain failed to win the election, Plain became a reality TV star. This, I think, is not that the kind of media convergence Jenkins imagined when he was writing this book. Rather than having a former Vice President candidate become a television spectacle, he imagined that politics would become interwoven with popular culture in a more productive way.
The Obama campaign was able to do this in a much more effective way, as is evidenced by his election. In fact, I would argue that the Obama “Hope” poster, designed by Shepard Fairey, is one of the best-known pieces of artwork of our time. This poster is interesting in a number of ways. First of all, it converges popular culture and politics. The poster’s popularity was aided by its widespread use on the Internet. Secondly, the Obama campaign used this poster, created by someone outside the official Obama campaign, to its advantage. Finally, and perhaps most interestingly, Fairey was able to create this original screen print using a picture that he found through Google. I’m not sure whether the original photographer had rights to the photograph or whether it was available on Creative Commons or not. Either way, I think that this particular campaign poster is an interesting one to consider in light of Jenkins discussion, and is, perhaps, even the “poster child” of a chapter entitled “Photoshop for Democracy”.
It’s possible (and very likely) that Fairey used Photoshop to create his Obama “Hope” poster and others like it. Jenkins briefly discusses Photoshop in this chapter and rights that “John Kroll, one of Photoshop’s co-creators, told Salon that the software program had democratized media in two ways: by allowing smaller groups to have professional quality graphics at low cost, and by allowing the public to manipulate and recirculate powerful images to make political statements” (232). This was certainly the case in the last election, and I imagine that it will be the same in the upcoming one. Finally, Jenkins mentions that, at the time of writing, it was easy to make fun of the concept of “Photoshop for democracy” though I believe that we’re moving away from this idea. It’s especially interesting to note everything that has changed since Jenkins wrote this book only a few short years ago.
Questions:
How do you imagine Photoshop for Democracy will occur in the upcoming election?
How had convergence culture increased since the writing/publication of this book?
Do you think that the ideas presented in Photoshop for democracy actually allows people to make informed voting decisions, or are we only voting for who has the coolest pictures?
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