Short answers, pulled from the story.
Henry Jenkins is an American media scholar, born on the 4th of June 1958, and Provost Professor of Communication, Journalism, and Cinematic Arts at the University of Southern California. He is best known for coining the term 'transmedia storytelling' in 2003, for his foundational work on fan culture in his 1992 book Textual Poachers, and for developing the theory of participatory culture.
Transmedia storytelling, as Jenkins defined it, is a process where integral elements of a fiction are dispersed systematically across multiple delivery channels to create a unified entertainment experience, with each medium making its own unique contribution to the story. He coined the term in 2003, and he described it as 'the art of world-making.' He pointed to The Matrix franchise as an example.
Textual Poachers, published in 1992, argued that television fans are active cultural producers, not passive consumers. Drawing on Michel de Certeau's The Practice of Everyday Life (1980), Jenkins described fans as 'poachers' who appropriate and remix mass culture to explore identity, extend storyworld timelines, and fill in gaps left by official narratives. The book is regarded as a seminal work that legitimized fan studies as a serious academic field.
Jenkins defined participatory culture as a culture with relatively low barriers to artistic expression and civic engagement, strong support for sharing creative work, informal mentorship, and a belief among members that their contributions matter and that social connection is meaningful. He identified four key forms: affiliations, expressions, collaborative problem-solving, and circulations.
A 2011 special issue of the journal Cultural Studies, edited by James Hay and Nick Couldry, gathered critics who argued Jenkins overstates the participatory power of users and underestimates the corporate logic embedded in converging media systems. Nico Carpentier argued Jenkins conflates interaction and participation; others, including Sarah Banet-Weiser, argued convergence-enabled creativity ultimately serves commercial profit imperatives. Jenkins published a detailed response in 2014 in the same journal.
The MacArthur Foundation funded a five-year, fifty-million-dollar initiative on digital learning, announced in 2006, of which Project New Media Literacies was one part. Jenkins helped lead that project, which aimed to develop instructional materials and a framework of social skills and cultural competencies to prepare young people for meaningful participation in new media environments.