Convergence Culture” of Henery Jenkins

 

Introduction

In his book “Convergence Culture”, Henery Jenkins addresses the life story as a form of narrative which he defines as many linguistic media oral, written image based or other different non verbal symbols. He mentioned that life stories and research on them occur across disciplines, it examines how these life stories creativity operate within the complex relationships that lie between these stories, lives and truths passing through different media and genres. In this paper, there will be a discussion of the grounds of Jenkins’s optimism supplied by a support to his views with the reasons behind it that are supplemented with examples from real life from the current digital age we live in. (Smith, 2019)

Creativity of Life Stories

Creativity has its critical impact in the lives of older people providing them with stimulation and giving sense of self worth. Through creativity, they can explore new endeavors, develop their sense of identity and help them better cope with the process of aging. Every one of them can tell his or her story of life and how creativity affected their life to learn new values and get involved to better life patterns and end up with having determined life stories. Older people may lose opportunities for growth, however, creativity and creative patterns of life can teach them much about themselves. Creative flow can produce better opportunities and enhanced expertise with greater psychological growth and transformation. Through it, the individual is capable of deepening his understanding of self and cultivates purposeful involvements. (Banks, 2019)

Life Stories and How They are Creative

According to Jenkins, the lived material of life gets shaped as narrative in life stories. In the sector of narrative psychology, we cannot find an individual’s life story on any kind of internet biography, giving the facts and events of life, rather, it is the way an individual integrates those facts and events internally and weave them back together to make a certain meaning. This narrative shall shape his identity in which everything he or she picks to include in the life story can reflect and shape who he or she is altogether. A life story does not only tell us what happened in someone’s everyday life, it, on the contrary, tells us why the events in this life were important, what they meant for that individual and who exactly he or she is. When we tell other people about ourselves, they tell our story in a narrative manner, this is how people communicate. But we think about our lives to ourselves in a narrative manner as well, we set a plot that leads us from one point to another. An old adage implies that everyone has a book inside his mind. Some people tend to write down in their diaries what occurs to them every day; nevertheless, researchers believe there is a large percent of people in the world who see their life as a story, and this is a common thing. These stories are not necessarily quite simple like fairy tales, the can have its own complications with lots of events going on in the environment surrounding people. (Beck, 2019)

According to researchers, narrative identity is constructed through the life development in adolescence and young adulthood. There is a relationship between the autobiographical reasoning and the psychological functioning of young adulthood. Young adults can construct life story narratives coded for the presence and valence of autobiographic reasoning, which is measured by the connections that lie between the events of life that are described in everyone’s self in negative, positive, neutral and mixed manner.( Fox, 1983)

Two Kinds of Stories to Tell About Ourselves

We all create our histories marked with highs and lows, and we share it to the world so we can shape our lives more meaningfully and purposely. Unlike any story we might have heard, our life does not follow a predefined path. Our experiences and identities are shifting constantly telling how we make sense of it. By taking these pieces of our lives and putting them together into a narrative we can create a unified whole which let us understand our lives coherently as a source of meaning. Researchers describe narrative identity as an internalized story we create about ourselves, as our own personal tailored myth. It contains heroes and villains like any myth who keep helping us or holding us back. Our life story is not an exhaustive history of everything that has happened, but we make the narrative choices ourselves. It focuses on the most extraordinary events, good and bad ones, because these experiences are what we need to make sense of and shape us therefore. (Medium, 2019)

How Media Affects Our Life Stories Path

Sometimes, it is hard to believe that it was only over a decade ago that our life was different from how we live now. Social media sites were available long before that but most people did not have access to them before that time. It is not just social media it is all kind of media that we encounter today and deal with, all of these media types have shaped our personality as we shaped it, we are the creator of it and they impacted our life and change how the story telling will be. On the one hand, businesses everywhere can now send their message to wider audience inside their countries and outside it. For small businesses they became capable of creating their own path in the marketplace which affected the life of people working in these companies and how they respond to different things around them. On the other hand, on social life, media has broken down the barriers when it comes to communication and provided different choices for contacting each other. Social media, for instance, made it easier to express ourselves and provided numerous ways for that not only with people we know but to the whole eternal world as well. It affected our character as it made it possible to track people down. To find older friends who we no longer meet which can open chances and opportunities in front of us in different ways. (Singer, 2013)

Amira and Media

This is time to tell an example of how media affected us so we became part of it, this is Amira, a middle aged woman who used to deal with direct contacts only at work or in social life. Few years ago, Amira had no idea about media and different tools it provide to us, then she met one of her old school friends who asked her to add her on her facebook account. Amira did not know anything about facebook until this time, she asked her friend to clarify what exactly she meant by adding on facebook. Her friend gave her a quick explanation and created an account for her. Now, Amira has a store on facebook where she sells cloths online. But if media has helped Amira financially, how can it change her life story? The answer lies here, Amira used to be a shy person, her life story was limited to those who are close to her, her family and friends, now she owns her business and she became open to different social opportunities, not just business opportunities, her character is changed, she became more social, she can talk with everyone fluently, with no shy, now she has more details to add to her life story compared to before she used the media.

Conclusion

According to Henery Jenkins, life story is a complex narrative and everyday truth, he says that as everyone was learning how to become a more active participant in the media environment, as more and more people were producing and circulating media themselves, they became part of a larger media landscape. We agree with him and we provided the support in this paper. We begin by focusing on life stories and creativity, it has its critical impact in the lives of older people providing them with stimulation and giving sense of self worth. Through creativity, they can explore new endeavors, develop their sense of identity and help them better cope with the process of aging. In the sector of narrative psychology, we cannot find an individual’s life story on any kind of internet biography, giving the facts and events of life, rather, it is the way an individual integrates those facts and events internally and weave them back together to make a certain meaning. According to researchers, narrative identity is constructed through the life development in adolescence and young adulthood. There is a relationship between the autobiographical reasoning and the psychological functioning of young adulthood. Then we discussed how media affects our life stories path either socially or in the field of business, how it shaped our personality. On the one hand, businesses everywhere can now send their message to wider audience inside their countries and outside it. On the other hand, on social life, media has broken down the barriers when it comes to communication and provided different choices for contacting each other. We provided an example of Amira who participated in the change of media and the media changed her life story as well eventually. (Smith, 2019)

 

References

1.     Banks, M. (2019). NARRATIVE IDENTITY: THE CONSTRUCTION OF THE LIFE STORY, AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL REASONING AND PSYCHOLOGICAL FUNCTIONING IN YOUNG ADULTHOOD. Victoria.

2.     Beck, J. (2019). The Story of Your Life. [online] The Atlantic. Available at: https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2015/08/life-stories-narrative-psychology-redemption-mental-health/400796/ [Accessed 27 Sep. 2019].

3.     Fox, R. (1983). The past is always present: Creative methods for capturing the life story. Clinical Social Work Journal, 11(4), pp.368-378.

4.     Medium. (2019). Ways social media has changed our society. [online] Available at: https://medium.com/w-i-t/ways-social-media-has-changed-our-society-38fd4d3e5ce8 [Accessed 27 Sep. 2019].

5.     Singer, J., Blagov, P., Berry, M. and Oost, K. (2013). Self-Defining Memories, Scripts, and the Life Story: Narrative Identity in Personality and Psychotherapy. Journal of Personality, 81(6), pp.569-582.

6.     Smith, E. (2019). The two kinds of stories we tell about ourselves. [online] ideas.ted.com. Available at: https://ideas.ted.com/the-two-kinds-of-stories-we-tell-about-ourselves/ [Accessed 27 Sep. 2019].