Contribution, commercialization & audience: understanding participation in an online creative community

ABSTRACT

This paper presents a qualitative study of attitudes towards participation and contribution in an online creative community. The setting of the work is an online community of practice focused on the use and development of a user-customizable music software package called Reaktor. Findings from the study highlight four emergent topics in the discourse related to user contributions to the community: contribution assessment, support for learning, perceptions of audience and tensions about commercialization. Our analysis of these topics frames discussion about the value and challenges of attending to amateur and professional users in online creative communities.

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Index Terms

• Human-centered computing

  • Collaborative and social computing

    • Collaborative and social computing theory, concepts and paradigms

      • Computer supported cooperative work

• Social and professional topics

  • Professional topics

    • Computing and business

      • Computer supported cooperative work