by 
BBC News online recently posted a summary of CMS Director Henry Jenkins’ keynote speech at this year’s Beyond Broadcast conference held last week at MIT and co-hosted by Comparative Media Studies (along with Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet & Society and the Yale Information Society).
In his keynote, Jenkins utilized examples of participatory democracy online (a key theme of the event), such as the popular Ask a Ninja series of online videos. The article summarizes Jenkins’ speech:
Even in a US primary election season, where would-be presidential contenders raced to announce their candidacy in online videos, Mr Jenkins’ keynote speech was an eye-opener.
The point, set out more fully in his book Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide, is essentially this – that politicians should not ignore the fun, frivolous side of the net because the web enthusiasms of the young: games, online video, machinima and mash-ups are the new online-tools that sooner or later will be used for political purposes.
