HW Creativity

Because new media allows us to virtually connect with our peers so conveniently, we are able to see what our family/friends are engaged in at any given moment. The social media platforms that allow us to connect with our associates are often used heavily throughout the day. This means that as each day elapses we are exposed to pictures, quotes, and videos that are posted by different kinds of people with varying personalities. Because this is the case, it is safe to say that new media fosters creativity. To illustrate, let’s consider the example of the new media site SoundCloud. SoundCloud is a site/app that permits its users to upload and share their music online. Not everyone who has a SoundCloud is necessarily a celebrity. In fact, what makes SoundCloud so remarkable is that it’s a world where you can hear and be influenced by many different kinds of music coming from various kinds of people, whether they have notoriety or not. Listening to the music other people have made can in turn cause you to try to experiment and expand your creative boundaries. This process isn’t only seen in sites like SoundCloud. Other new media such as Twitter and Flickr can foster creativity. For example, in their research article, Livia Hollenstein and Ross Purves discuss the action of “tagging”. Tagging is a way to share posts with others that you think may be intriguing, funny, cool, etc. A simple action such as tagging, which is seen in plenty of new media, allows people to be exposed to content they most likely wouldn’t have encountered by themselves. Whatever content that you see in new media, regardless of whether you found it yourself or if it was something you were tagged in, has the potential to influence you. For instance, if you enjoy painting and you stumble upon a different painting method online, you may be inclined to try it out. Another example could be discovering a new way to prepare a dish through new media. You may have been so accustomed to cooking a dish the way you know how to, but after seeing a different way online you may choose to make adjustments to your technique. All in all, new media fosters creativity and its somewhere you can visit whenever you need inspiration. Creativity is good since it allows people to look at things using a lens not traditional to them.

Works Cited:

Exploring place through user-generated content: Using Flickr tags to describe city cores 13-96-1-PB.pdf