The document discusses the intersection of identity, community, and creativity in the context of the internet and social media, highlighting how users transition from passive consumers to active producers. It explores concepts such as the metaverse, the structure of online communities, and the role of collaboration and participation in cultural production. Additionally, it examines issues related to identity construction, privacy, and the implications of digital interactions on social dynamics.

1. Creativity 2.0 I dentity & C ommunity N arratives and C reativity in the age of Internet re-mediation Presenting to EBSP Spring 2010 class Sofia Gkiousou – www.digital-era.org for Birkbeck, University of London

2. Cyberspace & Metaverse Cyberspace. A consensual hallucination William Gibson - Neuromancer Hiro is approaching the Street. It is the Broadway, the Champs Elysees of the Metaverse. It does not really exist. But right now, millions of people are walking up and down it. Neal Stephenson- Snow Crash

3. What space? “ a single world, having a unitary framework of experience (for instance, in respect of basic axes of time and place), yet at the same time one which creates new forms of fragmentation and dispersal .” Anthony Giddens, Modernity and Self-Identity The machine (as a network of hardware & software) The place (as a disconnected collective ) The third place (Oldenberg’s ‘anchor’ of community life and creative interaction) The medium (is it the message – content vs. form in McLuhan) The metamedium (a medium for the invention of media AND their capture) The cultural domain (as a collection of cultures and subcultures)

4. The remediated space New media pay homage rival refashion earlier media D. Bolter & R. Grusin - Remediation

5. The time for participation & creativity? Users as sharers / lurkers Users as creators The cult of the amateur ? (Andrew Keen) … many hopes have always been focused on the conversion of consumers into producers of means. For Guy Debord , to cite one example, there was no possibility of freedom in the use of time unless one possessed modern instruments for constructing everyday life. Only through their use, he said, could one progress 'from a utopian revolutionary art to an experiential revolutionary art' as quoted in 'Web 2.0' as a new context for artistic practices Juan Martin Prada, University of Cádiz, Spain

6. Online activities Source : Grunwald Associates LLC as quoted in NSBA, Creating & Connecting//Research and Guidelines on Online Social - and Educational - Networking “ Students are hardly passive couch potatoes online. Beyond basic communications, many students engage in highly creative activities on social networking sites — and a sizeable proportion of them are adventurous nonconformists who set the pace for their peers.” NSBA, 2007

7. Participation & networks More people than ever can participate in culture, contributing their ideas, views, information. The web allows them not just to publish but to share and connect, to collaborate and when the conditions are right, to create , together , at scale. Charles Leadbeater, We Think Commons-based peer production Collaborative efforts (e.g. Wikipedia) Networked information economy "system of production, distribution, and consumption of information goods characterized by decentralized individual action carried out through widely distributed, nonmarket means that do not depend on market strategies.” Yochai Benkler – The Wealth of Networks TRUST – REPUTATION - POWER

8. The conversation Brian Solis – The Conversation Prism

9. Dominant issues in the literature Identity construction Community cohesion and dynamics Collaboration Learning Creativity Privacy IP & copyright (Creative Commons and alternative approaches) Monetization

10. Places & Spaces MMORPGs Virtual Worlds

11. Remember Remediation?

12. OMG! They killed Kenny!

14. Identity & Community Constructing an identity The features of each service (primary – secondary) Does the community shape the identity? The performativity of the self (Goffman) Media Imagery (Debord) when users create, they discuss and share their creations learning from each other’s experience C. Ondrejka, Escaping the Gilded Cage

15. Creativity Highly customisable avatars – identity constructions Emotional involvement (wars, battles etc.) Social relationships Trade and promotion Machinima and mashups/ remixes Formation of groups via common creations (see Odrejka)

16. MMORPGs and SL

17. The process of socialisation Circulating and Sharing reflects social relationships Degrees of “publicness” Publicly Private behaviour (makers’ identities revealed) Privately Public behaviour (limiting access to makers’ identity) Patricia G. Lange Publicly Private and Privately Public

18. The three questions Identity & Community Narratives Learning & Creativity

19. Suggested Bibliography Arakji , R.Y. & Lang , K.R. (2007), Digital consumer Networks and Producer – Consumer Collaboration: Innovation and Product Development in the Video Game Industry, Journal of Management Information Systems, Vol. 24, No. 2, 195 – 219. Au , W. J. (2008), The making of Second Life – Notes from the New World, New York, HarperCollins. Bargh , J.A. & McKenna , K.Y.A. (2003), The Internet and Social Life, Annual Review of Psychology, 55:573 – 590. Book , B. (2005), Virtual World Business Brands: Entrepreneurship and Identity in Massively Multiplayer Online Gaming Environments, SSRN Working Paper Series, http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=73682 . boyd , d., & Heer , J. (2006). Profiles as conversation: Networked identity performance on Friendster. In the Proceedings of the Thirty-Ninth Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences. Los Alamitos, CA: IEEE Press. Castronova , E. (2005), Synthetic Worlds – The business and culture of online games, Chicago, The University of Chicago Press. Geser , H. (2007), Me, my Self and my Avatar. Some sociological aspects of “Second Life”, Release 1.0, http://socio,ch/intcom/t_hgeser17.pdf . Hemp , P. (2006), Avatar – Based Marketing, Harvard Business Review, June, pp. 48 – 57. , M. (1999), The driving forces in the virtual society, Communications of the ACM, Vol. 42 (12), pp. 64 – 70. LastIgbariaowka , FG; Hunter, D. (2004), The laws of the virtual worlds, California Law Review, Vol. 92-1. pp. 1-73. Meadows , M.S. (2008), I, Avatar: The Culture and Consequences of Having a Second Life, Berkelay, New Riders. Nabeth , T. (2005), ‘Understanding the Identity Concept in the Context of Digital Social Environments’; CALT – FIDIS working paper, January, http://www.calt.insead.edu/project/Fidis/documents/2005-fidis-Understanding_the_Identity_Concept_in_the_Context_of_Digital_Social_Environments.pdf . Ondrejka , C. (2004), Aviators, Moguls, Fashionistas and Barons: Economics and Ownership in Second Life, Social Science Research Network – Working Paper Series, http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=614663 .