Cédric Courtois and Peter MechantIBBT-MICT-Ghent University

Creative DIY on YouTube:

Communicating creativity through online video

Web platforms: little-c creativity is all around…

Creativity is all about connecting things(Gauntlett, 2011)

What? ‘… the interaction among aptitude, process and environment by which an individual or group produces a perceptible product that is both novel and useful as defined within a social context’

(Plucker, Beghetto & Dow, 2004)

• Creativity as combining elements: materials and ideas

Creative building blocks on the level of contents (self-made or adopted) and form (editing)… yet, what patterns of building blocks are present? (RQ 1)

• Social connection through creativity

With YouTube’s networked public… but what subtypes are expected? (RQ 2)

Identified-Offline (family, friends), Identified-Online (online in-group) and Unidentified-Online (remainder of YouTube community) (Courtois et al., 2011 and in press)

• Means to communicate creativity

Is our creativity recognized in terms of personality traits? (RQ 3)

Openness as major subtrate; also extraversion and conscientiousness

Method study one

•219 uploaders, recruited via ‘latest videos’ RSS feed

• Online questionnaire about…

• Latest video: self-made images and/or sound, self-edited, uploader in it?

• Video’s expected public: three subtypes, measure from earlier research

• Video downloaded and content-analyzed for creative building blocks

• Examples: creative activity, extracts popular culture, third-party performances

• Two coders, initial agreement: Kramer’s V .85-.92

• Personal Creativity (46%):

• Mostly self-edited, self-made sounds and images

• Highest chances of demonstrating creativity

• Remix Creativity (32%):• A lot of self-made video (not sound), incorporates extracts from pop culture (more sound than video)

• Borrowed Creativity (22%):• Very high chances to contain sound and images of third-party creativity (e.g. artistic performance)

Structures of creative combinations: latent class modeling of disclosed video characteristics and variables from content analysis

Mixed model ANOVA:

• Networked Public types (within-subjects): F(2,432) = 5.23, p < .05

• Networked Public types * Creativity Structures (between-subjects): F(4,432) = 4.44, p < .05

Method study two

• Random sample of (N =) 70 videos from study one

• Big Five measures of uploaders ideal and actual O, C, E in survey study one

• Team of 24 external raters rated uploaders’ O, C, E by their latest video

• Videos randomly assigned to raters, ratings on dedicated web page

• Five independent assessments per video

Criteria for external assessment of personality traits:

C O EConsistency

α Self-report uploaders’ actual self .78 .79 .83

α Self-report uploaders’ ideal self .83 .82 .82

α External assessment uploaders’ actual self .90 .87 .79Agreement

Intra-class correlation (2,1) .

43***

.39*** .

12***Accuracy

β Ideal Self .13 .11 .06

β Actual Self .02 .30* .01

(* p < .05, *** p < .001)

Conclusions

• Discourse on Web 2.0: mostly positive nature, despite critical sounds…

(e.g. Keen’s Cult of the Amateur, 2007)

• Flood of poorly made videos, available for the mass! However…

• ‘Uninteresting content’: aimed at small, yet closely connected audience

• Content for the broader public: contains extracts of pop culture

• Too easy to make and distribute content… everyone’s doing it. We can’t see the wood for the trees! However…

• Independent raters are able to infer uploaders’ actual openness, a personality trait known as the substrate of creative behaviour

Conclusions

• Discourse on Web 2.0: mostly positive nature, despite critical sounds…

(e.g. Keen’s Cult of the Amateur, 2007)

• Flood of poorly made videos, available for the mass! However…

• ‘Uninteresting content’: aimed at small, yet closely connected audience

• Content for the broader public: contains extracts of pop culture

• Too easy to make and distribute content… everyone’s doing it. We can’t see the wood for the trees! However…

• Independent raters are able to infer uploaders’ actual openness, a personality trait known as the substrate of creative behaviour

Thank you for listening…Any questions?

cedric.courtois@ugent.be http://www.mict.be