Creativity

New technology fosters creativity through mashups. The ubiquity of the Internet and advances in technologies help create digitalization of traditional media into new online formats that are easily consumable and shareable by online users. With the ease of downloading, remixing, reproducing, and republishing, anyone can create content by combining multiple pieces of work from other sources. For instance, in the article, "Disney Tolerates a Rap Parody of Its Critters. But Why?", several users have created a parody of a rap song on YouTube that is based on popular Disney characters. It is a mashup because it is a music video, pieced together from snippets of animated shows along with cartoon characters doing the singing. The author noted that while there are potential copyright issues, Internet has generally tolerated parodies so far. This kind of mashup is made possible through digitalization of the original content, along with creativity of the consumers of media who also become content creators.

It is also important that through mashups, there is a convergence of user roles. A consumer of news can also be a contributor in online media. In the article, "User-generated visibility: Secondary gatekeeping in a shared media space", Jane Singer noted that journalists, as traditional gatekeepers of news based on their professional judgement and standards, have gradually relegated these responsibilities to Internet users who are also active contributors. In this ecosystem, since Internet allows users to easily create their own content, every user is, in effect, the gatekeeper to produce quality content that can attract more audience, who may create mashups by building on that content, or generate new ideas from their own creativity, and the cycle continues.

Works Cited:

Barnes, Brooks. “Disney Tolerates a Rap Parody of Its Critters. But Why?” The New York Times, 23 Sept. 2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/24/business/media/24crank.html.

Singer, Jane. “User-Generated Visibility: Secondary Gatekeeping in a Shared Media Space.” New Media & Society, http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1461444813477833.