Stephanie Waltz's Midterm

Horkheimer and Adorno vs. Jenkins


Our current cultural media society is both an individual experience and a convergence culture. Everyday, people interact with technology to communicate. Whether it be using a cell phone, email, facebook, television, etc. technology is all around us. To elaborate on this, I am going to compare and contrast two different authors that we have discussed in this class. Horkheimer and Adorno and Jenkins’ chapters on convergence culture can both be compared and contrasted. These different authors use overlapping as well as specifically different concepts and theories to explain their views on convergence audience and participatory audience.

Both of these authors would agree that there is a definite audience convergence. Horkheimer and Adorno are extremely harsh when discussing the audience having any control over how they feel when interacting with media, especially in the matter of viewing or listening to media. According to them, “Industry robs the individual of his function. Its prime service to the customer is to do his schematizing” (Horkheimer, 1944, p. 124). They believe that the audience has been trained what to expect when watching movies, therefore, the audience already knows how to react. Thus, audience members automatically know how to feel. For instance, certain background music in a film may infer to audience members how they should be feeling during that particular scene.

Jenkins would agree with Horkheimer and Adorno that audience convergence exists. He uses the concept of spoiling as an example of convergence. It is in this way that he explains collective intelligence and the knowledge community. Jenkins uses the internet as a way for people to do spoiling, collective intelligence, and knowledge community, which he derives from Pierre Levy in his book. Using collective intelligence and knowledge community he points out that virtual communities help the audience stating, “What we cannot know or do on our own, we may now do collectively” (Jenkins, 2006, p. 27). The ideas of collective intelligence and knowledge communities have answers that an individual may be looking for. These may also be negative in a way that people may not even want to find out answers for themselves, but rather go to these virtual communities for information.

Jenkins’ ideas about audience convergence are focused somewhat differently from Horkheimer & Adorno. But they do overlap and both would agree that there is an obvious converging in today’s society. Yet, Horkheimer & Adorno and Jenkins will disagree about some issues involving audience convergence.

One of the key things that the two differ on is the idea of individual experience. Horkheimer and Adorno state that the audience is shown or inferred as to how to feel or react to media. In their view, an individual experience is not an option while being entertained by media. Simply put, they state that, “they remain objects” (Horkheimer, 1944, p.147). This means that every person in the industry is looked at as a whole unit, rather than an individual person. People have no control to make their own choices and their opinion counts for nothing.

However, Jenkins notes that there are exceptions to people converging to media. He goes on to explain that transmedia storytelling may be used for certain media produced franchises. Using the film franchise, The Matrix as an example, he describes this transmedia as showing a film, and then expanding it through other media outlets such as comic books and/or television shows. Simply put, he states, “The whole is worth more than the sum of the parts.” By this, he means that there may be things in other media outlets that weren’t previously shown or implied in the original media outlet. Thus, it is better for an individual to experience all of the different outlets of the franchise, rather than just experiencing one of the outlets. This is also a chance for the individual to use imagination and show other people their own view on the subject matter. This participatory audience gives them a chance to branch out of the converging audience and let them do what they want to do.

I do believe that these different authors give us insight to the title of our class. Horkheimer and Adorno explain that information and technology are taking over audience freedom and worth. They imply that humans are merely a number and don’t have any significance in this society. To them, if a media industry loses an audience member it’s not the end of the world.

Jenkins, on the other hand, seems to have more optimism for the human race and the information society. Although he may somewhat agree with Horkheimer and Adorno that there is an audience convergence, he also points out that there is participatory audience. In this sense, people are free to expand on media franchises, as opposed to Horkheimer and Adorno’s idea that people don’t have any control over the media they interact with.

Critiques discussed in the class for these different authors are overlapping yet have some differences. Horkheimer and Adorno have trouble making a thesis statement for their argument, whereas Jenkins had trouble with being too specific. He only gave one example, being the Harry Potter franchise, without comparing or contrasting another media franchise. Given that Jenkins didn’t compare his arguments to anything else, it’s hard to believe what he is saying. Similar to Jenkins’ credibility issue, Horkheimer and Adorno are also difficult to believe. Since they provide no thesis statement, they provide no solution to the problem, making it hard to believe their argument as well.

All in all, these authors are similar yet relatively distinct from one another. They would both agree that there is a definite audience convergence in our culture. However, they would disagree with the severity and gravity of the convergence. Horkheimer and Adorno see that the audience has no control over any of the situations around them involving media. Jenkins would argue that people do conform to a collective intelligence, but they do have the opportunity to use their own free will and imagination to expand on media franchises through transmedia storytelling. The different authors have shown that the media industry can have both an individual impact, as well as audience conformity.



Horkheimer, Max and Theodor Adorno. (1944). The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception. The Seabury Press: New York, New York.

Jenkins, Henry. (2006). Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide. New York University Press: New York and London.