Creating digital objects

As has already been said, that anyone can create something new is not an evident phenomenon; on the contrary, it corresponds to the idea of ​​ perfect and complete humanity, but at the same time has never been perceived as an ordinary human activity.

The creation of digital content is different from the“physical" one, but at the same time, there are common themes or areas between them. The key is the concept of creativity, i.e. creativity transcribed into Czech. Who is and who is not creative? Can creativity be taught? Is it even right and permissible for so many people to be involved in content creation? In addition to the quality issues already mentioned by us, sometimes there are also technological or information science objections - how will it be possible to search in such a large amount of data at all? Will anyone index and record it?  

The digital environment enables the creation of digital content as a specific variant of the physical one. For example, it is possible to have an online version of a newspaper or run a website that will compete with classic newspapers — the creation of wholly new and original forms and types of content. The digitization of design opens up space for the concept of non-traditional multimedia or interactive forms. After all, for example, computer games are today perceived as a separate part of artistic creation with their theory, professional community, research topics, and, above all, a tremendous economic impact.   

Why is the creation of digital content part of the digital competencies that apply to every citizen? This question implicitly includes a question from a previous art exhibition - why is it not possible to leave the creation of digital objects to experts?  

At this point, we would like to offer some answers that will hopefully (at least, to some extent) show the complexity and multi-layered nature of the whole problem. First of all, there is the anthropological starting point - man is a creature who is called by his freedom to create. He is not only (and here again shows a European, not very economic narrative) called to work, as a homo-Faber, but through his work, he should develop himself and the society in which he lives. In the section devoted to participatory work on Wikipedia, we tried to show that everyone can bring something to society through their creative work. This possibility should also be a particular moral commandment - a man who would give up creativity has betrayed his mission in the world.       

On the other hand, the second aspect is economic - more and more professions require one to be able to create digital objects of various kinds - from text documents, through tables, program codes to infographics and presentations. Very often, these are professions that do not have a primary anchor in ICT. Still, the informatization of society transforms them so that they have to work with the creation of digital objects if they are to do their job well. This area includes, for example, teachers, scientists, but also marketers, managers, and journalists.   

Symbolic analysts, who Robert Reich speaks of as a critical layer in the information society, play a crucial role here, of course. If a community does not have the people who can create digital objects and become symbolic analysts, it will have significant problems - primarily economic, secondarily also political and social.  

Between, say, anthropological and economic optics, there is a civic view. To present oneself in cyberspace and be able to intervene in various decision-making processes, the ability to create adequate and functional digital objects is essential for one. People need to create simple objects themselves or to assign their creations adequately or think critically about them. Similarly, he should make an online petition, effectively disseminate it and understand the degree of its legally binding nature compared to a regular petition. 

Without the ability to create digital content, the scope for civic activism is notably reduced, especially one that is firmly based on digital technologies, but this is an area of ​​citizens' activities that will become increasingly important.   

We would also like to point out that digital content creation is one of the most and fastest changing parts of the whole framework of digital competencies. Both by the constant emergence of new tools or services in which it is possible to create digital content and rapidly changing the trends, tastes, or forms of digital content and its acceptability. An archetypal example can be, for example, the use of the Comic Sans font, which was once extremely popular (especially among teenagers) and is now perceived either as an expression of utter distaste or as a recessive or cartoonist element.     

Another example is infographics, which did not exist 15 years ago and are now handled as a regular medium, similarly as if we were writing text in a word processor or creating presentations in PowerPoint. 

In terms of digital content creation, video is one of the top places, whether in terms of time spent on it or economic and social impacts. In this respect, it can be said that, in a way, it has partially replaced photographs. YouTubers have shared a video that is not primarily generated by using professional equipment but largely by amateurs with mobile phones.    

Although the difference between professional and amateur work is clear, the relationship between users and the creation of videos, whether for their use or for sharing with others, is considerable. Filming became like folk art, something that everyone could create. Due to the prevalence of mobile phones or tablets with a camera, there is essentially no economic or technical obstacle to such a creation not being possible. 

Without wishing to be bound by any systematic typology, from a Digcomp perspective, the key is that video content can often be associated with capturing a socially important event or happening. In such a case, it plays the role of witness documentary material, often of not very high technical or compositional quality. But its informative value is essential. It must be emphasized that this material's rawness reinforces the impression of authenticity, which may not be true at all. Although video manipulations are so far less frequent and demanding than photographs, it can be expected that this area of ​​video post-production will become one of the domains of disinformation projects. This category of video is therefore associated with civic activism.   

The second group is videos, which are designed to spread and promote a certain person, idea, or fact from the very beginning. This area includes, for example, Youtubers or speeches by politicians. These videos are characterized by the fact that they have a script, and their creation is intentional from the beginning. To develop skills for creating such content, one must work with the writing (and oratory) and ideally form an adequate base material (e.g., to provide suitable sound and light). These videos can also be associated with post-production - editing, color balancing, keying work - or with captions.      

YouTube is the largest video platform not only to upload videos but also for sharing and dissemination. Under the video, it is possible to lead a discussion and create playlists from them. The platform is essential in three other ways. For example, first of all, it is YouTube that has managed to make video one of the dominant elements of digital content, even though it was not the first (and perhaps not the most functionally equipped) portal of its kind. The second specificity is related to the mix of professional content (which can now even be paid for) and amateur content. At the same time, these two spheres are closely intertwined, and they also enter the dimension of content that is copyrighted, uploaded by an unknown user, but whose rights are not enforced by anyone. This connection between professional and amateur is essential for the digital environment.       

The second specificity is related to the mass nature of the portal. It is one of the largest and most visited servers globally and a highly profitable Alphabet consortium (Google). Video advertising is a source of revenue for the portal and the most successful creators according to the advertising rules. If the videos aren't getting enough traffic, the author won't receive anything for the advertisement they're showing. Still, once it exceeds a certain level, the video content becomes a source of compelling revenue.

certain level, the video content becomes a source of compelling revenue. 

We have already mentioned Youtubers as a specific group of content creators. On the one hand, this is due to age (most of them are between about 10-25 years old) because they are very young artists, which corresponds to the themes and linguistic and expressive means. It is interesting that while the texts of teenage authors are usually not very well received and uninteresting even for their age group, the video works entirely differently in this respect and gives these people a new adequate tool of self-expression.  

The third specificity is impact - Youtubers, if successful, have thousands of viewers. Their influence and popularity are comparable to personalities who have a similar profile on television, but with the important difference that they are independent creators and take care of video processing, its creation, and dissemination. This success is closely related to the potential economic profit, which includes both advertising revenue on YouTube and, above all, the issue of product or brand promotion in the form of product placement. However, such advertising is not always clearly marked in the videos, and due to the target group, this dimension of Youtuber activity is sometimes perceived as problematic.

Youtubers are specific for another important feature that often appears in digital content creation - a close relationship with the community. Discussion papers, meetings, the possibility of thematic participation are other important shaping features of this phenomenon. It must be emphasized that we cannot thoroughly assess the significance of the YouTubers at this time. At least in the case of creators, they support creativity, lead to independence, independence, development of project and product approaches.

While the video is a format that is gaining more and more popularity and allows easy and effective publishing of content that is interesting to viewers, creating a blog or blogging, in general, is an entirely different phenomenon with a different tradition and perhaps also perspective. The development of blogs is connected with the advent of Web 2.0, which emphasized the possibility of individual users creating their content. The text was the easiest way to express yourself. First of all, we learn to express ourselves in writing at school, and our entire educational tradition is directed towards it and sees it as a clear peak. Still, it is also a form of digital content creation available to everyone in the late 1990s and early 1990s - unlike audio or video. Writing a text has the advantage that it does not require any specific technical skill - anyone can start a blog.          

Blogs came at the time with the revolutionary idea that to publish content, you do not need to create a website, but that you need to use some services where the basic layout is provided. Still, the focus will be on the text and its simple form: the minor formatting and setting options, the better.

Blogs soon became quite fashionable, and in today's narrative, they are associated primarily with teenagers, who wrote their ordinary everyday experiences and dreams on them, which may seem naive and superficial to the adult reader. The fact is that the spectrum of blogs grew to become something significantly broader than teenage diaries. Some of them gradually became industry media, or in the US, for example, there are still influential blogs or authors who publish their news, observations, or behind-the-scenes information in this form.       

The general problem with blogs was that no one was brought up to create them. We can write one or two good essays, comment on sporting events, or reflect on an exhibition. Still, for a blog to be sustainable and meaningful, it needed to be permanently maintained, thematically narrow, and enjoyable. Running such a blog is then time-consuming and intellectually demanding. At the same time, it quickly became apparent that for a project to be successful (and the author himself enjoyed writing), he needed to gain readers and take care of advertising, and SEO.

All this resulted in the gradual decline of blogs, which has led to the current state. There are a small number of exciting bloggers that have found a  community with their readers. They often earn money from advertising for their writing (or, on the contrary, writing is a source of influence and personal brand for them). The second group is the blogs of institutions such as schools, banks, or manufacturers of specialty goods, where the blog acts as a marketing communication channel. Copywriters usually take care of its fulfillment. Some blogs have been transformed into journals published in electronic form. Often, not very large media can have a significant influence on the diversity of the publishing environment. Another group of bloggers is scientists or interesting personalities who gain readability based on their expertise or life situation.    

Only a small number of “ordinary" bloggers today run their blogs on specialized services. Blogs on large servers (such as iDnes) are still popular, or these authors relocate to social networks (Medium or Facebook, which allows the creation of long blog posts).   

Thus, blogs clearly show that the digital environment can also create digital forms that are mass-unsustainable in the long run. But they can - as happened right here - undergo a particular transformation and find a place for their distinctive (and relatively stable) existence.

At this point, we would like to mention some types of digital artifacts that are new and have no direct or easily detectable analogy in the“old culture" or offer fundamental changes or improvements. The list provided by us is eclectic and aims to identify some interesting phenomena in this area.  

Gif, i.e. an animated image or meme, is currently an exciting type of digital object. Its work is by no means demanding and specific in that it is not used “on its own", but it has found its role in the field of digital communication, wherein in some respects, it replaces or complements emotions. Gif is already a relatively old format (including support for animations dating from 1989), which has been experiencing a great revolution and spread in the last few years. 

Tweets as short messages (initially up to 140 characters, today up to 280) represent a unique digital object. They can be either plain text or supplemented by a link or image. What is specific to them is that they require a very heavily compressed message, which must often be conveyed in an abbreviated and humorous way. In addition, it contains hashtags, i.e. keywords that link it to thematically related posts. In the Czech environment are known mainly those whose author is Petr Kukal.   

Gamebooks are already known from the book's form - the story is structured here so that the reader can (typically as the main character) decide what should happen and leaf through the book to different places. The digital form significantly simplified their creation (the author sees a storyline in front of him while writing) and offered a completely different reading comfort. Skipping is solved by browsing (in the form of a URL link), and various media can also be connected to the book itself - in addition to images, one can work with video or music, or other audio tracks.   

Animated films have been around for a long time, but the digital environment has significantly changed their work. First of all, there was a necessary reduction in the line between the animated and feature films. Feature films such as Avatar or The Hobbit are costly for post-production and computer processing. From the point of view of civic competencies, however, it is interesting that you can find tools for creating animated films (for example, simple scripting of predefined characters) or even open-source films (for instance, from Blender). Everyone can use ready-made characters, sounds, animations and create your movie or give the film an alternative ending.      

Game streaming is the last digital format we would like to mention. The development of computer games itself is usually so expensive that we will not consider it in our model, but it is worth thinking about streaming gaming. Playing games is a significant phenomenon, and in recent years, it has been complemented by the fact that some players share their playing with others. It can have the character of an annotated solution of tasks or challenging parts, a review of the game. Still, often it is just a commentary (many hours) about the gradual playing of a particular game. Leading players (commentators) gain a lot of funding from this activity and a large community of followers that are waiting to solve a particular problem. It is necessary to emphasize that playing and commenting on playing so that it is exciting and fun, even in a several-hour format, is a highly demanding and challenging activity.