Creativity

New media fosters creativity by allowing us (the consumers) to create, interact and share our creations with the world over the internet. New Media empowers the individual to be less passive and be more innovative. The digitization of music and video allows anyone to be an artist. Furthermore, current digital technology allows us to create it ourselves over the internet in our home without actually going through record label or a studio. 

For example, we can create videos known as mashups and uploaded to YouTube. Jones explains that a mashup is an overlap of one existing audio or video file onto another existing video or audio file. In this case, individuals can combine two or more existing songs or videos into one new song or video. 

Another example is when Miller explains how Twitter decided to use what their consumers invented and adopted while using Twitter such as: “@” symbol or “RT” or even “#”. Twitter in this case is flexible in allowing the user to define the product rather than the producer defining the product.

Sources:

The New Math of Mashups from The New Yorker Magazine 2005. http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2005/01/10/050110crmu_music

Disney Tolerates a Rap Parody of Its Critters. But Why? The New York Times, September 24, 2007; available at http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/24/business/media/24crank.html

Twitter Serves Up Ideas From Its Followers by CLAIRE CAIN MILLER, the New York Times, October 26, 2009. Available at: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/26/technology/internet/26twitter.html