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Social Media as One that Oppresses the Cultural Creativity
Nowadays, with the increasing popularity of social media and smart phones, there are more and more people who are willing to share what they experience and what lessons they have learned in their daily life on such social media applications as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. It is also becoming more and more convenient for the social media users to contact and make friends with people from other corners of the world. As a result, it seems that that the social media have become an excellent platform on which people can actively engage in cross-cultural communication and generate strong desires to post innovative message and enhance their creativity. However, there are many people who believe that the social media contribute little to the cultural creativity. For instance, Joshua Chienda from the Nation points out, “it is ironical that these highly innovative technologies have, by and large, bred anything but innovation and originality in the end users.” In the mind of these people, in addition to the increased chances of plagiarism and impingement on others’ copyrights, as people make use of social media and post repetitive message and photos, they are also less likely to spend much less time on the creative activities.
A harsh fact that has to be noticed is that as people keep uploading new photos and new message to such social media as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and so on, the majority of them are not contributing to creativity but instead doing repetitive work that looks the same. Regarding the popularity of the social media, Megan O’ Neill points out that every minute as many as 35 hours of new videos will be uploaded on Youtube, which also makes Youtube an ideal platform for advertisers and artists to expand their influence and make themselves better known. However, just because such a huge number of messages and photos are uploaded to the Internet does not necessarily mean that the social media users’ capacity of innovation and creativity has been stimulated. To evaluate the degree of creativity, quality weighs more than quantity. Although the original content will enjoy greater popularity than the non-original one, the fact is that when most people are happy with the quality of the photos and videos they have completed, they are not contributing to the cultural creativity but are actually doing repetitive work others have done. Just as Mike Murphy states, when observing the photos of quite a few Instagram users, it is easy to observe that these posts “range from what seems easily replicable, like photos of people, wearing hats, looking away from the camera and out into the distance to the slightly more impressive, like images of people standing atop a mountain.” In other words, although these photos look beautiful and feature different backgrounds and different people, when they are put together in comparison with the photos uploaded by others, they are the same in the photographing techniques, how the characters stand, from what angles these photos are taken. Then these works that have the homogeneous content have nothing to do with creativity.
Here it is worthy of notice that the influential users of social media play a significant role in explaining so much homogeneous content. These influential ones not only include the sports stars and popular signers that have thousands of followers. They also include those cyber celebrities who have posted pictures of their traveling, eating food, and buying clothes and accumulated thousands of fans. From the perspective of the ordinary users, although they do like the popular stars, the latter seems too remote for them to mimic. Instead, they could learn from how the cyber celebrities dress themselves, take photos, and deal with the difficulities in their life. In this way, the way these cyber celebrities deal with their photos provides good examples for the ordinary people about how they can take beautiful photos on their own. As their fans follow these influential users’ examples, with or without their awareness, they are actually mimicking others and following others’ patterns without creating innovative and creative works.
Another main way the social media damage the cultural diversity is the increasing disrespect for the original content under the copyright protection. Of special notice, the intellectual property protection has been one fundamental step to encourage innovation and creativity. To promote the cultural creativity, one essential step is to enhance the protection of the intellectual property. By allowing the intellectual property owners to decide who can use their original content and the circumstances where their content can be used and charging the users of fees, the intellectual property mechanism not only shows respect for the intellectual fruits of the owners but also conveys a clear message that the creative work is a worthwhile one. The more creative their works are, the greater returns they can earn. However, with the increasingly popularity of the social media, great threats have been posed to the intellectual property, especially copyright. Copyright is an entitlement the owners have to their original content. Without the permission from the copyright owners, it is also illegitimate for others to use the original content. When it comes to the social media, it turns out that the social media have become a place where the intellectual property gains little respect. According to Suvrashis Sarkar, a scholar from Jamnalal Bajaj Institute of Management, “ The enormous volume of material being published on the internet every minute and the speed at which these get shared to people around the globe on Social media creates extreme threat to the rightful authors and owners of Intellectual Property Rights” (3191). Studies On the one hand, many social media users directly use others’ brands without getting the permission from the owners. Some users also directly upload the oral and visual records of the songs under the copyright protection without paying any fees. These oral and visual records that attract thousands of visits directly impinge on the copyright owners’ rights.
On the other hand, some other social media users might not use the original content under the copyright protection for commercial purposes. However, as they use the content of this type, it is still legally required of them to acknowledge the source of the original content and clearly identify the authors. According to Jonathan Bailey, unlike the plagiarism at school where the students will face severe punishments directly, plagiarism on the social media carries no negative consequences and thus no accountability. Unfortunately, as many users are familiar with the casual languages of the social media, they do not even have the awareness of the significance of attributing the sources of their messages. Some others even intentionally avoid marking the sources of their message and create an impression that the message is their own so as to attract others’ attention. With the huge costs to create innovative content but the extremely low costs to engage in plagiarism, it is hard to say that the social media could be an ideal platform for creativity. For instance, when a photographer takes a group of pictures in the Himalayas after two months’ efforts and decides to post these inspiring photos on Twitter, he or she is expecting that as thousands of viewers on Twitter enjoy the beautiful photos, they can also get interested in him or her. It turns out that these photos prove a great success. However, as the lovers of these photos transit these photos, they just remove the authors’ copyright routes, which indicates that the owner still remains not famous. Then even when he or she has the idea of taking better photos, he or she might directly give up because it is not worthwhile to do so. Here it is quite obvious that the impingement on the copyright popular on the social media will directly discourage the copyright owners from engaging in more creative work.
In fact, to engage in creative work, what really matters is the quality but not the quantity of the works. It is one thing to say that people have taken a lot of photos and edited a lot of messages, while it is another thing to say that these photos and message are creative. To be creative and original, what needs to be done is to spend more time in reflecting on the social realities and paying attention to their daily life to acquire the inspiration. During this process, both critical thinking and time are necessary. However, as the social media takes up more and more time the users could have, the time they can spend in thinking critically also becomes less and less. A research from BBC reveals that although 40% of the interviewees believe that two hours are a bit too long for people to spend on the social media, the fact is that the majority of people spend no less than two hours in social media. With so much time spent in browsing others’ message and photos, the extra time people have to engage in self-reflection and self-discovery becomes much less. Some people might argue that the numerous message and photos posted on social media could serve as essential sources of inspirations. The fact is that as the users spend more time in reading the short messages one by one and viewing repetitive photos, they have little time in thinking about what they have read, let alone acquire inspirations and learn to become creative.
Based on the above illustration, it is quite apparent that many people refuse to recognize the positive role of social media in promoting cultural creativity. They believe that to promote cultural creativity, what should be done firstly is to show high respect for intellectual property protection. As a large number of people refuse to acknowledge the sources of their message or intentionally use others’ original content for commercial purposes, they are also destroying the cultural creativity severely. In fact, with the increased popularity of the social media, the plagiarism and has also become a major concern. In addition, in spite of such a large number of messages and videos uploaded on the Internet, these things are merely repetitive with no creativity. As the social media users spend a lot of time in taking new pictures and uploading these pictures to the social media, they are not contributing to the cultural creativity but just doing the repetitive work, which is of little help to the cultural creativity. To engage in the cultural creativity work, what should be done is to take some extra time to reflect on what they really want to create and what they have learned instead of getting fully indulged in viewing countless messages and photos uploaded by others. Only in this way could creativity be invoked.
Works Cited
Bailey, Jonathan. “The Impact of Social Media on Plagiarism.” Plagiarism Today, 4 Jun. 2015, https://www.plagiarismtoday.com/2015/06/04/the-impact-of-social-media-on-plagiar ism/. Accessed 27Oct. 2018.
Chienda, Joshua. “Social Media Stifles Originality.” The Nation, 4 Jun. 2017, https://mwnation.com/social-media-stifles-originality/. Accessed 27 Oct. 2018.
Galer, Sophia Smith. “How Much Is ‘Too Much Time’ on Social Media?” BBC, 19 Jan. 2018, https://www.bbc.com/future/story/20180118-how-much-is-too-much-time-on-social- media. Accessed 27Oct. 2018.
Murphy, Mike. “You Are not Original or Creative on Instagram.” Quartzy, 8 Aug. 2018, https://qz.com/quartzy/1349585/you-are-not-original-or-creative-on-instagram/. Accessed 28 Oct. 2018.
Sarkar, Suvrashis. “Originality and Its Exploitation in Social Media--With Emphasis on Infringement on Intellectual Property Rights.” International Journal of Emerging Technologies and Innovative Research, vol.2, no.7, 2015, pp.3191-3202.
O’ Neill, Magan. “Has Social Media Spawned a New ‘Age of Creativity’?” Adweek, 14 Dec. 2010, https://www.adweek.com/digital/social-media-creativity/. Accessed 28 Oct. 2018.
