Discovering Hidden Digital Producers: Understanding Motivation and Creativity in Social Media Production

Social media production is digital production activity in social media, and many young people have partaken in this everyday practice to creatively craft their messages. Applying self-determination theory and the four C model of creativity, this study examines young people's content creation process by conceptualizing social media production as four types of activities (i.e., text, photo, graphic, and video production) and using these activities to unravel the relationships between motivation and creativity. Using an online survey of young digital producers (N = 545), findings indicated that text production was considered not-creative, whereas video production was matched with the highest level of creativity (i.e., Pro-c). Also, both intrinsic and extrinsic motivation have affected creativity and young people's participation, as they produced outcomes of creative self-efficacy and social media production skills. Overall, this study makes theoretical contributions to understand the complexity in social media participation and the significance of various digital production activities in social media. Public Policy Relevance Statement Social media production can be organized into text, photo, graphic, and video production, and the creative value of these activities were mapped consequently as not-creative, mini-c, little-c, and Pro-c. The strength of young people's participation in social media production came from both extrinsic and intrinsic rewards, as they interplay to increase motivation and produce positive outcomes of creative self-efficacy and social media production skills.