Week 8: What helped me understand Learning Pack A...

I chose to do my critical essay on Learning Pack A as I feel that this was the most engaging pack offered in the first section of this course. My essay looked how popular culture increased civic participation in youths. One article which I came across really helped me to see this link was an article by Henry Jenkins in the Journal of Transformative Works and Cultures called "Cultural Acupuncture": Fan activism and the Harry Potter Alliance. Mind you, that entire issue from the Journal of Transformative Works and Culture was a great asset. In this article, Henry Jenkins, the man behind 'participatory culture', explores how popular culture can make civic participation or activism attractive to young people using the case study of the Harry Potter Alliance (http://thehpalliance.org/).

'Fan activism pushes deeper, dealing not with isolated references but with the full content world, recognizing and rewarding fans who know more and imagine better. Certainly, some of the HPA's allusions are widely recognized—Dumbledore's Army, perhaps—facilitating meaningful partnership with nonfan organizations that value the creative energy the Harry Potter books unleashed. Yet, as fan activists, the HPA members mobilize obscure characters and events, even quoting specific dialogue, and thus reward fan mastery. Fan activism works because of its fannishness. This fannishness extends beyond specific ways of reading texts to specific forms of fan participation (including cosplay, Wizard Rock, fan fiction, and fan vidding), some of which may look strange outside the community. But each contributes to fandom's ability to organize and mobilize quickly, to frame issues and educate supporters, to get the word out through every new media platform and channel. This ability is what ultimately distinguishes fan activism from more casual deployment of pop culture references.' (Jenkins, 2012).

For me, this article helped me to better understand participatory culture and how it can benefit young people. Contrary to what people say, young people are finding a way to connect with real world concerns in an online environment, one that is possibly more accepting than the physical world around them. They are developing skills, making friends and connections based on mutual trust and interests - all good things. Don't assume that I'm saying that an online life is more important than the real world, but for some kids this is probably the better option while they are growing up. Hopefully from this participatory culture and the experiences had, they will learn those skills which will guide them later on when they leave school and face the real "real world".

And good on those teens and young adults for getting active on matters of social and cultural importance through the Harry Potter Alliance, it's more than I ever did. I think sometimes we don't give teens or young adults the appropriate knowledge to deal with those issues. A lot of young people I know, ones who are contributing to today's society, know nothing on politics and all that is involved and are so not keen to learn. Maybe if we had had the participatory culture using popular culture to engage us like the HPA, maybe now we might feel more credible having our say and taking a stand on issues that are important to us.

Ultimately, this article highlighted to me the possibilities of using popular culture to engage youths, not just in civic participation but in general social environments. This was something that the essential readings did hint at but did not go into great depth - or if they did, they just weren't that interesting to me... See, already an example - using the Harry Potter Alliance to explore this issue actually made it attractive to me!

Reference List:

Jenkins, H. (2012). “Cultural acupuncture”: Fan activism and the Harry Potter Alliance. Transformative Works and Culture, 10. Retrieved from http://journal.transformativeworks.com/index.php/twc/article/view/305