Tapping into the Collective Creativity of the Crowd: The Effectiveness of Key Incentives in Fostering Creative Crowdsourcing

To better understand the conditions that most effectively stimulate creative participation online, a crowdsourcing project was implemented on Amazon’s Mechanical Turk, collecting 4200 written and visual submissions from online participants. An experimental research design tested the impact of specific incentive structures (i.e. financial rewards, bonuses, specification of project purpose, attribution of authorship credit) on the outcomes of creative participation (quantity of submissions, quality of submissions, time spent on task). The study found that extrinsic rewards (i.e. higher pay and bonuses) are effective in encouraging participants to accept the creative task, whereas the strategies that boost the creativity of the submissions are: offering a bonus, mentioning a charitable purpose, and giving contributors authorship credit. These findings help illuminate the factors that have the greatest impact on the quality and quantity of online creative participation, thus making a vital contribution to our understanding of digital creativity

Measuring New Media Literacies: Towards the Development of a Comprehensive Assessment Tool

This study assesses the psychometric properties of a newly tested self-report assessment tool for media literacy, based on the twelve new media literacy skills (NMLs) developed by Jenkins et al. (2006). The sample (N=327) consisted of normal volunteers who completed a comprehensive online survey that measured their NML skills, media exposure, digital participation, and civic engagement. A factor analysis performed on the survey items yielded 10 NMLs that emerged as significant subscales. A series of multivariate analyses of variance indicate a strong relationship between these NMLs and respondents’ exposure to new media forms, their participation in Web 2.0 platforms, and their civic engagement. Specifically, individuals who consume and produce new media extensively had the highest NML levels; Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and blogging emerged as the most significant factors in this analysis. The reliability and scalability of this assessment tool are discussed, in the context of current challenges facing media literacy evaluation

Cultural innovation and narrative synergy in R. Kelly’s Trapped in the Closet

This article analyses the narrative conventions of R. Kelly’s serial “hip-hopera” Trapped in the Closet, exploring the manner in which the artist’s chosen narrative strategies have shaped the generic reading of the series. Specifically, I discuss how Trapped in the Closet re-appropriates the conventions of the soap opera and the music video, to create a wholly original product that both evokes these schematas and simultaneously challenges their traditional narrative norms. Looking at R. Kelly’s chosen promotional strategy, I argue that the convergence of genres and narrative influences, as evident in the series’ content and style, parallels the convergence of media channels—radio, television, internet—that characterised its release and distribution, highlighting the increasing importance of a transmedial approach in the conceptualisation and dissemination of cultural texts

Same but Different? Distributed Creativity in the Internet Age

Abstract This article aims to contribute to a better understanding of the impact of the Internet on distributed creativity. While the social mechanisms that are fundamental for creative expression are not radically different online, and while we want to avoid overly romanticizing the role of the Internet or falling prey to technological determinism, we argue that there are, nevertheless, significant shifts that must be acknowledged and examined. In order to achieve a more nuanced and analytical account, we suggest a simple framework centred around five questions - who, when, where, how and why - that allow for a differentiated understanding of the range of changes in creative expression in the Internet age. To model the application of this framework, we use the example of crowdsourced art (participatory online art) as a creative practice that illustrates some of these key shifts. In thinking about creativity in online spaces, we suggest that the consideration of actors (who), times (when), places (where), processes (how) and motives (why) facilitates a valuable multidimensional understanding of these significant and complex changes.</jats:p

Youth Digital Participation: Now More than Ever

One of the far-reaching implications of the current global COVID-19 pandemic has been the sudden boost in use of digital media due to social distancing and stay-at-home orders. In times of routine, youth are often the first to adopt new technologies and platforms, to experiment with modes of production and practices of sharing, and often spend significant time and energy socializing online. Now such digital practices have become common among much wider demographics. Moreover, the move to online learning in schools and the spurt of innovative digital experiences offered has abruptly shifted the rhetoric of concern often associated with youth’s so-called "screen time." The articles in this thematic issue - though written long before the COVID-19 pandemic - address many of the questions that now are significantly brought to the forefront. What are the potentials and opportunities offered by youth digital participation for learning, for self-expression, for identity formation, and for social connection? How does digital participation shape civic and political life? And finally, especially when digital participation is so ever-present, what are barriers to youth participation online, and what are the challenges and risks it poses

LAMBOOZLED!: The design and development of a game-based approach to news literacy education

Given the need for innovative, engaging, and youth-centered approaches to media literacy, as well as the potential of active pedagogies to facilitate youth civic education and efficacy, games emerge as a particularly promising and under-utilized avenue for news literacy education. Our research asks, how might we use game-based learning to tackle fake news and stimulate news literacy among a youth audience? Here, we reflect on the process of designing LAMBOOZLED!, a news literacy game for middle school and high school students, based on a multilevel game design framework that allowed us to articulate learning objectives, consider suitable mechanics, dynamics and aesthetics, and integrate relevant instructional principles along multiple learning dimensions. Positioning this work at the nexus of game design and media literacy education, we discuss our key decision points and the larger stakes of adopting a game-based approach to news literacy education in the current political climate

Internet Memes as Partial Stories: Identifying Political Narratives in Coronavirus Memes

This article advances a narrative approach to internet memes conceptualized as partial stories that reflect, capture, and contribute to wider storylines. One key difficulty in studying memes as stories rests in the fact that narrative analysis often focuses on plot at the expense of roles and characters. Building on narrative psychology and, in particular, transactional and linguistic types of analysis, we propose a typology of character roles—Persecutor, Victim, Hero, and Fool—that is useful to uncover scenarios within memes and, thus, reveal their intrinsic narrative structure. We apply this framework to the analysis of political narratives embedded within 241 coronavirus memes systematically sampled from Reddit's r/CoronavirusMemes between January and May 2020. Five main scenarios or storylines emerged from this analysis, the first four depicting a more or less common narrative of protest against the incompetence and/or malevolence of the political class—from Donald Trump and the Republicans in the United States to Boris Johnson and the Conservatives in the United Kingdom and, finally, to politicians in Asia such as Xi Jinping and Kim Jong-un—while the fifth scenario brought to the fore social categories made salient by the pandemic and focused especially on the relation between people who respect and don't respect measures. The psychological, social, and political implications of these scenarios in relation to the pandemic are discussed, as well as the broader consequences of studying memes as narrative structures

Analyzing youth digital participation: aims, actors, contexts and intensities

Participation is often used as a blanket term that is uncritically celebrated; this is particularly true in the case of youth digital participation. In this article, we propose a youth-focused analytical framework, applicable to a wide variety of youth digital participation projects, which can help facilitate a more nuanced understanding of these participatory practices. This framework analyzes the aims envisioned for youth participation, the actors and contexts of these activities, and the variable levels of participatory intensity, in order to more accurately assess the forms and outcomes of youth digital participation. We demonstrate the value of this framework by applying it to two contemporary cases of digital youth participation: an informal online community (Nerdfighters) and a formalized educational initiative (CyberPatriot). Such analyses facilitate normative assessments of youth digital participation, which enable us to better assess what participation is good for, and for whom