Designing for remixing : supporting an Online community of amateur creators

This work describes a framework for the design and study of an online community of amateur creators. I focus on remixing as the lens to understand the contexts and processes of creative expression as it is fostered within social media environments. I am motivated by three broad questions: 1) Process: how do people remix and what is the role of remixing in cultural production and social learning? 2) Conditions: what kind of attributes influence people's remixing practices? 3) Attitudes: what are people's attitudes toward remixing? As part of this work, I conceived, developed and studied the Scratch Online Community: a website where young people share and remix their own video games and animations, as well as those of their peers. In five years, the community has grown to more than one million registered members and two million community-contributed projects. In the spirit of the theme of this work, this dissertation remixes several articles and blog posts written by myself or in collaboration with others. Wherever possible, the sources of the material are noted.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Architecture. Program in Media Arts and Sciences.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2012

Author dc:creator

• Monroy-Hernández, Andrés

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Mitchel Resnick.

• Architecture. Program in Media Arts and Sciences.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/78202

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/78202