Video-sharing Platform Creativity (AHRC PEC)

Video-sharing platforms such as YouTube, Vimeo, and TikTok advertise themselves as a creative paradise. Some scholars also believe these platforms significantly boost creativity in video-making. It has been argued that these platforms offer creative opportunities: first, by sidestepping traditional gatekeepers and lowering the entry barriers for creators; secondly, platforms may provide creators with toolkits, knowledge, and connections with immediate audience feedback, thus empowering and democratizing the production of culture.

This project challenges these arguments and identifies the anti-creative aspects of video-sharing platforms. It explores psychological research on creativity and economic theories of cultural goods. Further, the project reveals that sharing platforms exemplified by YouTube may not change the underlying dynamics of cultural and creative industries, such as creator poverty, inequality, or risk (uncertainty), which might dampen video creativity. In addition, the recommendation algorithm may even enlarge the gap between the most popular creators and everyone else. The project also reviews the recent global wave of platform regulations on copyright, content management, algorithms and competition, and evaluates how the regulations interact with those anti-creative factors in sharing platforms.