Convergence Culture – a media theoretical study : A description of the contemporary state of media culture from the viewpoint of practices of popular culture, their meaning making, and realized interactions in the context of contemporary drama serials

Drawing from the theoretical foundations of the “critical theory” of the Frankfurt School and the media ethnographic “cultural studies” approach of the british Birmingham School, this study attempts to sketch out a media theoretical overview of the contemporary state of media culture. Using the term convergence culture as the foundation, this study offers a theoretical background to the two contemporary streams that are the significant and distinct tendencies of convergence culture: intermedial convergence, its contemporary state and historical tendencies that can be traced back using the past media theoretical approach of the Frankfurt School, and cultural convergence, its contemporary state and historical tendencies, which lineage in a media theoretical context can be traced back to the british ethographic “cultural studies” field. Using contemporary drama serials to identify and pinpoint these two stream, this study shows how intermedial convergence expresses itself today through media conglomeration in terms of branding, product placement and marketing as the result of the “completed” convergence between screen culture and popular music as the current defining state of commodity culture. Using the contemporary british drama serial Doctor Who I examine the processes of meaning making among members of the television series fan culture on the popular video content page youtube.com as expressions of cultural convergence. This study argues how the skills and talents developed in the interaction with popular culture and in a process of interaction between fans and participants (collective intelligence and participatory culture), will have an impact on the institutionalized knowledge “from above” and in a collective process will seep over to other fields of expertise. The study also argues, as a consequence of convergence culture, that in the contemporary state of online practices, social networking and in our interactions with digital media content, a mandatory “presence” has been created where we today are defined more through our online selves and these practices, than the ones that used to define us in our “physical” lives: “The medium is no longer just the message, we are living in a state where there is only messages”