Literat, I. & Glăveanu, V. P. (2018). Distributed Creativity on the Internet: A Theoretical Foundation for Online Creative Participation. International Journal of Communication, 12, 893–908.

The authors attempt to forge a link between the research on creativity and online participation by viewing creativity through the lens of distributed creativity. According to the authors, as a sociotechnological process, creativity is shaped by social, material, and temporal dimensions. Distributed creativity is described as a collaborative process, because new ideas are based on the ideas of others, are created using tools designed by others, and because the creative ideas arae shared with a variety of audiences.  The creative process, then, happens not inside the creator, but between the creator, other people, objects, and across time–all processes mediated and facilitated by online tools and processes. Online creativity is fundamentally networked, which expands aspects of social interactions: collaboration is easier and open to more diverse applications, asynchronicity broadens interactive possibilities, communication and connection to audiences can happen whenever and wherever. Evaluation becomes a social construct as the online community has access to comment on creative outputs with likes, thumbs down, or other quick responses, in addition to written dialogue.  Materially, online applications offer a plethora of digital media tools for creators to use, and the production of objects, processes, events, and performances can be generated and distributed quickly and efficiently. The authors pinpoint a distinction between executory participation (just responding to a task) and structural participation (a new conceptual design). Finally, they discuss creativity in terms of its relation to time–online creative products are transient, people have constant access to creative online tools beginning from a very young age, and products are in a constant state of revision in a nonlinear and iterative process, constantly exposed to critique by a virtual audience.

The authors organized the article by first describing distributed creativity and the divisions of social, material, and temporal dimensions. While they had copious references, they did not give a specific definition of creativity, except to describe it by its online characteristics. The usual definition of creativity involves words like novel and meaningful; while the authors did refer to the iterative process, they ascribed value to online work as the number of likes or followers given to a specific online work or artist. While distributed creativity may be a useful framework for considering implications of online influences, convincing others of its validity using examples of fanfiction and memes is probably not the most defensible stance.

I have wondered how online applications affect creativity; this article does not convince me, however mightily it tries, that technology enhances the creative process. Does the fact that everyone can now make a meme in 3 minutes mean that everyone is universally creative? Why does a person who digitizes pictures of his feet in different locations warrant international acclaim? (A circumstance I recently ran across. No pun intended.) And why should the instant whims of a global, clicking audience determine the creative value of an artifact? (Although I suppose if it took someone three minutes to make a meme, it doesn’t deserve any further consideration.) The authors mentioned ethos multiple times, but I wonder about pathos.  Isn’t creativity about passion and emotion? My son is a musician, audio engineer, and videographer. He spends hours, and days, and weeks on his craft, and uses the internet to share his work with others. Yet, with only a click (or lack of a click), the virtual audience can applaud or condemn his efforts. Yes, I wonder about ethos, too–the ethics behind a virtual world that holds so much power over what we think and do. Including creativity. And I miss recognition of the pathos–not the hunger for instant gratification and ego-boosting analytics, but the real, true passion for an art that evolves from effort, struggle, and resilience. Is it out there? Certainly. Is that what students in today’s classrooms value? Not many. And I think that as I pursue research on creativity in educational technology, this is something to ponder.