This document summarizes a research paper about co-creation and participation as a means of innovation in new media, using photography as a case study. It discusses theories of co-creation and creativity, and how they relate to changes in the photographic field. The fieldwork findings show how amateurs have blurred lines with professionals through communities and new sharing platforms. This introduced innovations that gatekeepers like Kodak failed to recognize, focusing too much on their own services instead of changes in the field. The conclusions state that co-creation practices can challenge perspectives on creativity and innovations through collective processes rather than objects or subjects.

1. Co-creation and Participation as a
Means of Innovation in New Media:
An Analysis of Creativity in the Photographic Field
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Co-creation and participation as a means of innovation in new media
Gemma San Cornelio (Universitat Oberta de Catalunya),
Edgar Gómez Cruz (University of Leeds)
http://ijoc.org/index.php/ijoc/article/view/1902/1046
International Journal of Communication (8) 2014

2. 1. Context and origin of the paper
2. Theoretical ‘encounters’
• Co-creation
• Csikszentmihalyi meets Bourdieu
3. Fieldwork findings
• Changes and innovations in the photographic field
4. Conclusions
Schedule
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Co-creation and participation as a means of innovation in new media

3. 1. Context and origin of the paper
1) Theorizing the notion of co-creation in the field of new media (project CREATIVE
on Creative Practices and pariticipation in new media)
2) Taking a case study on a collective of photographers in this context (PhD project)
3) Analysing innovation, through the lens of the theories of creativity
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Co-creation and participation as a means of innovation in new media

4. 4
Co-creation
•“The phenomenon of consumers that are increasingly participative in the
process of making and circulating media content and experiences” (Banks &
Deuze, 2009).
• Relevance of users contribution to media. ‘non trivial component’ of media
developed by consumers.
• Oriented to innovation, ‘co-evolutionary model’ (Banks and Potts, 2010)
• ‘situated creativity’ (Potts and Cunningham, 2008), “Degrees of participation”
(Bauwens, 2009, Carpentier, 2008).
“Relating (implicitly or explicitly) industries with external agents that include audiences,
fans, amateurs, or independent artists” (San Cornelio et al, 2013, 2014)
•Industry-oriented initiatives versus ‘emergent’ or ‘non directive’ initiatives.
•Photography communities could be a non directive approach to co-creation.
Which is the role of industries in social network sites?
2. Theoretical “encounters”
Co-creation and participation as a means of innovation in new media

5. 5
Csikszentmihalyi meets Bourdieu
• Analyse co-creation as ‘creativity’, not only as a collective phenomenon.
•Theories of creativity: Boden, Marina and Csikszentmihalyi (non individual
attribute)
• Cultural Theory: Bourdieu. The notion of field (photography)
“as a setting in which agents and their social positions are located. The position of each
particular agent in the field is a result of the interaction between the specific rules of the
field, the agent’s habitus, and the agent’s capital (social, economic, and cultural)”
(Bourdieu, 1984, 1996). (interactions between professionals or not, etc.)
Csikszentmihalyi (1996) describes creativity as “the result of the interaction of a system
composed of three subsystems that are necessary so that an idea, product, or creative
discovery can take place. For him, creativity is the result of the interaction between the
domain, the field, and the person. (implicitly collective)”
2. Theoretical “encounters”
Co-creation and participation as a means of innovation in new media

6. 6
Csikszentmihalyi meets Bourdieu
• There are some connections between the notion of field and the notion of
‘domain’
• Connection of creativity with innovation: You need to know the rules of a
domain in order to innovate.
• For Csikszentmihalyi the more structured is a domain the more difficult to
introduce innovations.
• The role of the ‘field’ (gatekeepers) is fundamental.
• Let’s see what happens in the photographic field… (domain)
2. Theoretical “encounters”
Co-creation and participation as a means of innovation in new media

7. 7
Changes and innovations in the photographic field
•Co-creation could be regarded as a set of non-directed creative practices,
produced collectively,fostering alternative circuits of interchange (symbols,
knowledge, tools) and eventually introducing innovation and changes within a field.
•Are due to: the emergence of new actors that possess different capitals and
meanings; change in tools and devices needed to produce images; new actors that
had no previous participation in the field gained presence and capital.
•Practitioners of photography could transform, with their practices, some of the
formal and stable arrangements within the field, and these subtle changes are
capable of transforming the entire field.
Innovation and creativity could be seen not only as the result of the direct
collaboration between industries and users but as an output of different
changes and struggles within the field.
3. Fieldwork findings
Co-creation and participation as a means of innovation in new media

8. 8
Changes and innovations in the photographic field
• Professionals versus amateurs. Blurring the limits.
• Emergence of new markets (semi-professional).
• Learning communities
• New actors (technological companies, stick memories, print services) enter the
field
• New circuits for sharing and exhibiting photos (Flickr, Instagram), new objects (the
banal, everyday life), and new photographic identities (Iphoneographer, artist).
Gatekeepers failed to recognize the importance of the changes that were taking
place; Kodak. They did not produced digital cameras until much later. Instead, they
focused on digitization services and sharing platforms that never took off.
The role of gatekeepers is not only to verify creativity as experts but also to
identify potential or actual innovations in their respective fields. This way, the
failing of Kodak is related to the fact of not recognizing the intimate relation of other
actors interacting with digital photography, (for instance flikr)
3. Fieldwork findings
Co-creation and participation as a means of innovation in new media

9. 9
• Innovation can have a larger scope if we introduce a systemic look, which is
suggested by the notion of field.
• Co-creation and the transformations of different fields can be regarded through
the lens of creativity theories in order to identify the key elements that come into
play in a creative process that could result in innovation.
• Industries (but maybe not the original actors in the field) have collateral benefits
of these transformations.
• Co-creation practices would be an exponent of creativity in new media and a
challenge in terms of introducing different ways of thinking and analyzing creative
practices.
• Introducing creativity theories involves a change in the current discourses on co-
creation regarding both the theoretical framework and the focus of the research,
thus displacing the focus from the creative subjects and the resulting objects to
the processes and the creative practices.
4 . Conclusions
Co-creation and participation as a means of innovation in new media