When obsolete technology meets convergence culture: The case of VHS videocassettes

Abstract

Technological developments have led to a rethinking of how obsolete media should be treated when it becomes relatively inaccessible. This article focuses on Video Home System (VHS) videocassettes in digital culture. Using semi-structured interviews undertaken with people who converted their videocassettes into a digital format, this study explores the notion of participatory and convergence culture. It shows how media innovation results in emergent roles and functions for videocassettes, attributing new experiences and meanings to both digital and VHS formats. Specifically, divergence helps videocassette owners control and manage family memories, strengthening ties between family members and relations between friends. This culminates in the creation of an inherited object of memory. The findings indicate a lack of confidence in technology, especially in its ability to preserve family memories. In addition, it was found that a sort of spiritual power is attributed to videocassettes, which prevents their owners from throwing them away. This study offers a model of the divergence process and a set of terms relying on research into religion transformations and human–technology relations. These frameworks can be applied to participatory culture, more accurately accounting for old versus new media user behaviors.

Reproduce and adapt: Homestuck in print and digital (Re)Incarnations

“…Research has also been done on various archives’ and libraries’ efforts to preserve digital-born works (Clark et al, 2020; Taylor, 2004; Weston et al, 2017) and the difficulties such archives face, as well as possible solutions (Broussard and Boss, 2018; Grigar, 2021). Aharoni (2021) has discussed how, while individuals digitize content of obsolete technology, the content’s now-obsolete hosts (VHS tapes, in this case) are also preserved and take on special meaning. But for websites, this kind of preservation may be impossible, as new iterations will often overwrite old.…”

When Mainstream and Alternative Media Integrate: A Polysystem Approach to Media System Interactions

“…This study breaks new ground by incorporating a dynamic functional theory into media studies-Polysystem theory (Even-Zohar 1990), which is based on relational thinking. It used in contrast to common theoretical perspectives that examine encounters between old and new technological media platforms, such as convergence theory (Aharoni 2021a;Jenkins 2006Jenkins , 2014 or relations between new and old cultural actors in a single media field such as Bourdieu's (1993) field theory. Both examine the implications of these transitions on only a single system/field, usually one that absorbs new actors or represents a new technology, without examining the mutual implications of the encounters on each system separately.…”