Web+2.0+and+Creativity

=Web 2.0, Motivation, and Creativity=

Lucas John Jensen


//'I have always imagined the information space as something to which everyone has immediate and intuitive access, and not just to browse, but to create.’// Tim Berners-Lee

//'We don't hate the media, we become the media’// Jello Biafra

Web 2.huh? What is this Web 2.0 stuff anyway?
//The rise of Web 2.0// The past decade has seen a rise in a new paradigm on the Internet, dubbed "Web 2.0." The Internet of Web 2.0 is an Internet that is driven from a bottom-up perspective, increasingly populated with content from users instead of developers (Cormode & Krishnamurthy, 2008). The increased popularity and availability of free or inexpensive and easy-to-use Web 2.0 applications has driven a more user-centric computing and Internet experience.

//From top down to bottom up//

It must be noted that Web 2.0 is something of a so-called "buzz word," ascribed to a change in the Internet after the fact by pundits. However, it is true that transformative change has taken place in terms of how content is created on the Internet under the Web 2.0 paradigm (Cormode & Krishnamurthy, 2008; Greenhow, Robelia, & Hughes, 2009; Ravenscroft, 2009). In the early Internet days of the 1990s, retroactively known as the era of “Web 1.0,” content was delivered in a top-down manner by a limited number of content providers (Cormode & Krishnamurthy, 2008; Greenhow et al., 2009). Although Web 1.0 was touted as being “interactive,” it functioned, for the most part, as little more than a repository of knowledge, akin to an encyclopedia or dictionary (Cormode & Krishnamurthy, 2008; Greenhow et al., 2009). This version of the Internet mirrored traditional educational practices, expert-driven and top-down, with users functioning as passive receptors of information (Dede, 2008; Greenhow et al., 2009). Most user-generated content was relegated to communication-based communities like message boards, chat rooms, and bulletin boards, and posting content online required knowledge of programming hypertext markup language, otherwise known as HTML (Greenhow et al., 2009).

In the late 1990s and even more so in the early 2000s, the top-down paradigm of content generation started to shift toward the user because the barriers to content creation and programming slowly disappeared due to new tools–dubbed Web 2.0–that helped users generate and post content to the web (Greenhow et al., 2009). This transformation was most evident early on in the form of blogging. Blogs started in 1997 before a rapid increase in popularity in the early 2000s, abetted by the ease of use with tools like Blogger, Wordpress, and Livejournal (Hong, 2008; Martindale & Wiley, 2004). The term “blog” is actually short for “web log,” an online diary, journal, or log that allows easy publishing for users (Martindale & Wiley, 2004). Early blogs were mostly personal affairs, but they quickly expanded to cover discussions of nearly any imaginable topic, including--but certainly not limited to—politics, celebrity gossip, science, and cooking. Now blogs are a de rigueur part of the Web experience and are used in many educational contexts (Duffy & Bruns, 2009; Hong, 2008; Hsu & Lin, 2008; Martindale & Wiley, 2004; Stiler & Philleo, 2003; Williams & Jacobs, 2004). The blog represents a shift in the way content is generated, as the locus of control of content creation has changed. Content creation is now more in the domain of the user instead of a “professional” creator or top-down gatekeeper. Before the blog, mostly professional reporters and writers generated credible, “newsy” content on the Internet. Blogs arrived and gave a journalistic and curatorial voice to everyone with a computer and Internet connection.

Other Web 2.0 tools such as Wikipedia, YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook mirror this shift in user autonomy and control over online content generation. These sites are really nothing more than shells and tools for content generation, filled with ideas, work, and creativity of their users. For instance, the creators of Facebook and Twitter generate no content on their own; their sites are merely vessels for the thoughts and interactions of the people who use the site. Without users, Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter are empty shells!

//So...how much are people creating?//

A lot. The rate at which Web 2.0 users are generating new content is staggering. Look at the above chart with regards to photos. Let us leave aside aesthetic concerns (and that is asking quite a bit of a good number of these photos!), people are snapping more pictures than ever, and, more importantly, they are sharing them with others. Gone are the days of vacation slideshows on the family slide projector. Now, amateur photographers create photo albums on Flickr or Facebook and share them with friends, family, and even the public. Flickr just stored its six billionth photo, and it houses considerably less photos than Facebook. YouTube is awash in new content, too, and some of it is quite complex and creative. It is not all videos of families and friends. Amateur documentarians and mashup artists have found a home with streaming video sites like Vimeo and YouTube. This is to say nothing of the

One possible fly in the ointment, so to speak: is all of this work original, innovative, or creative? No. No, it is not. In fact, a vast majority of it isn't, at least in the grand scheme of things. However, for a lot of these users, the content generated is creative and innovative and original. These Web 2.0 tools and sites offer the user a creative outlet, a means for self-expression. For the sake of this discussion, we will call most of this content "creative," in a very loose sense.

Why are Web 2.0 users creating so much?
Let us look at the obvious first: most of these sites are free and easy to use. Being able to stream and share video is a very new technology. Ditto the desktop publishing that blogs and wikis allow. In the early days of the Internet, a user would have to learn programming to post information online. Now, it's an easy sign in procedure and you're up and running like a (semi-) professional. The learning curve is quite small for Web 2.0 tools and sites.

But there is more to it than that. A huge component of this upsurge in content creation is the social aspect. Almost all blogs are equipped with comment features, wherein users add running commentary to each blog post. Most successful websites—e.g. CNN.com or Netflix—have vibrant discussion forum communities, as do e-commerce sites like Amazon.com. Facebook, Twitter, and other social networking sites are built on the discussion model; on Facebook, for example, the user can “like” or comment on nearly every single activity of his or her friends’. Every single piece of posted content is up for some sort of discussion or conversation. Debates and discussion can be fervent in these environments, perhaps due to user interest, but perhaps due to an environment that gives itself over to discussions more readily.

Perhaps the Web 2.0 world is similar to the view that Stillinger (1991) thought: no creative work is an individual effort, free of influence. We are products of our environments, friends, families, and peer groups, and of our collaborations and competitions with them. The Web 2.0 paradigm is one that increases the ease of content creation, but it also makes easier the ability to receive feedback from others.

//Self-Determination Theory and intrinsic motivation//

A motivational theory relevant to the discussion of Web 2.0 is Deci and Ryan’s (2000) Self-Determination Theory (SDT), which holds that people have innate psychological needs and are motivated by them. SDT chooses to examine the importance of psychological needs as well as goals in motivating others. According to SDT, the three psychological needs of //autonomy, relatedness//, and //competency// are essential for understanding what motivates people, particularly in the context of instructional goals (Deci & Ryan, 2000). Deci and Ryan’s work mostly focuses on intrinsic motivation in education, motivation that comes from within rather than externally (Chen & Jang, 2010; Covington, 2000; Deci & Ryan, 1985a; Deci & Ryan, 2000; Dickinson, 1995; Ryan & Deci, 2000c).

In contrast to this, extrinsic motivation concerns external pressures or promises of rewards that motivate someone to learn or accomplish a task. Some examples of extrinsic motivators in a traditional K-12 classroom setting might include grades, parental pressure to succeed, the promise of extra credit or extra recess time, end-of-year awards and recognition, or in-class praise, among many others. The key here is that the motivation comes extrinsically, not intrinsically, from without the learner rather than within (Pintrich & Schunk, 2002; Ryan & Deci, 2000c; Schunk, 2008). Even if given a creative-seeming assignment in school, students would be motivated by people and factors that are not necessarily under his/her control, such as the promise of a reward or the potential for negative consequences upon failure.

It seems clear that Web 2.0 users and content creators are mostly motivated intrinsically, given that there are few extrinsic rewards that come from their participation in the Internet. What money can be gained from fleeting YouTube fame? Who is ordering them to create mashups? Who forces them to edit Wikipedia? These desires come from within rather than without.



The figure above illustrates why Web 2.0 content generators might be motivated, based on SDT. Web 2.0 offers them autonomy and control over the tools they use and what they choose to create. They feel competent using these inexpensive and easy tools, especially with regards with how they interact with their creative ideas. Users who are good at video editing can explore that, without having to write. Blog writers don't have to edit video. Finally, and, perhaps most importantly, Web 2.0 tools offer relatedness, a chance to collaborate and receive feedback from peers and fellow users.



An illustrative example is Wikipedia, the online free encyclopedia. One might argue that it is a large experiment in social constructivism (or, more to the point, constructionism). Wikis are collaborative documents with easy usage, so it makes sense that the world's largest encyclopedia would be housed in one. Wikipedia is a massive undertaking (see above), and nobody involved receives monetary compensation for working on it, and yet it has grown into the world's largest free repository for information, even if much of the material presented is controversial (one might argue that all information is controversial to some degree).

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Anyone can edit Wikipedia, and behind its relatively benign facade, exists a world of debate and discussion that can best be described as heated. Still, Vygotsky might be proud of it, as users engage in these debates, scaffolding knowledge off one another as well as learning from each other how better to edit and navigate the wiki. In fact, most of Web 2.0 usage comes from watching others work, so to speak: "I saw that my friends edited Wikipedia, so maybe I should, too!" This kind of collaboration (and competition) can inspire users and taps into their need for relatedness. Most importantly, individual users are created a communal body of knowledge, independent of most time and location constraints. The same can be said of the information passed around and discussions started via blogs and social networking sites. Ultimately, Web 2.0 tools help fulfill our intrinsic needs for collaboration (and competition?) and self-expression as well as giving us autonomy, relatedness, and competency.