This chapter discusses youth creative production through new media. It explores how youth engage in online creative communities and collaborations, and how they improve their skills through feedback. The chapter also examines how youth gain audiences and recognition for their work by sharing personal media and customizing their online profiles. As young people's skills advance, they may specialize in a genre and collaborate with others on more complex media projects, driven by the desire for validation and reputation online. While not always seeking professional careers, creative production provides youth social engagement and a means of self-expression.

1. Chapter 6:
Creative Production
Chapter Summary by Leanna Bergeron

2. 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?

3. 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 actand 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.

4. 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.

5. 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.

6. 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.

7. 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.

8. 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.

9. Gaining Audience
 The 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.

10. 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.