Chapter 6:Creative Production

Chapter Summary by Leanna Bergeron

Questions Addressed in This Chapter

What kind of creative communities and collaborations do youth engage in through producing new media?

What are the mechanisms they describe for how they improved their craft?

How do they gain audiences and receive recognition and fame for their work?

Overview(why you should care)

Social media reshapes the youth’s process for self-expression, learning, and sociality.

Media theorists argue that media consumption is not a passive act and that viewers and readers actively shape cultural meanings.

Digital media production is on it’s way to becoming a part of our everyday communications and online socializations.

Personal Photos and Videos

Personal creative media is shared through social networking sites such as Facebook and Myspace.

Media is intended to capture personally meaningful events and relationships (self archival).

This digital sharing is supported by advancing technologies in digital cameras and camera phones.

These advanced technologies allow people to pick up media production as

part of their everyday creative activity.

Profiles Profile modification exists primarily

on sites such as Myspace, Facebook, LiveJournal, deviantART, and Youtube.

When teens post links on their own profiles and other’s profiles they are engaging in acts of social communication.

The ability to customize gives youth freedom in displaying a profile which they believe reflects their personal identity.

When kids share personal media they often connect with others and are encouraged to increase production both on and offline.

Personal Media Sharing Media Production

Personal media sharing can be seen as a jumping off point towards more challenging media creation.

People are often self-motivated and self-taught in learning how to manipulate code, technical devices, and networked forms of distribution.

Specialization and Collaboration

As young people’s creative production expertise advances, they also begin to develop a unique voice and specialty.

In the creation of things like amateur hip-hop and Youtube videos, there are often multiple people involved in a collaboration of the media.

Media production requires multiple forms of expertise, and collaboration is an integral part of the production process.

Improving the Craft

Creative communities provide sources of help and context where creators can get feedback from audiences as well as fellow creators.

Critique comes in many forms such as comments, private messages, offers to collaborate, and promotion from other members of an interested-oriented group.

On sites such as Youtube, both productive and unproductive feedback exists.

When young people get validation for their work from a peer, it is an important stepping stone to developing an identity as a media creator.

Gaining AudienceThe desire for sharing, visibility, and reputation is a

power driver for creative production in the online world.

The recognition and validation is highly motivational.

Some people who can reach wide audiences can parlay their creative work into future careers.

In Conclusion… In most cases, young people who create digital media are not aspiring for

fame or a professional career.

They engage in digital media production as a social activity or as a hobby.

They receive tremendous validation for their efforts and improved craft from their creative communities.

Creative production can be a source for new friendships.

Whether it be everyday photography or advanced video production, youth are using media as a way to document their lives as a means of self-expression.

Young creators have the ability to become part of the process of defining new genres and cultural forms through creative production.