Table Of ContentOnline Evaluation of Creativity
and the Arts
This book makes an important, useful, and well-timed contribution to the
digital humanities, as a forerunner in the emerging area of digital evaluation.
—Owen Gallagher, National College of Art and Design, Ireland
Social media have dramatically popularized practices of evaluation,
especially of cultural products and artistic expressions. The practices of
“liking” and rating any shared content such as music, blogs, film, videos,
photographs, artwork, and performances are ubiquitous in today’s digital
environments. As a result, creative producers are increasingly developing
reputations and careers through a complex blend of online social reputa-
tion management and distribution platforms and more long-standing forms
of marketing channels and professional evaluation. In this context, O nline
Evaluation of Creativity and the Arts seeks to examine the newly emerging
forms of evaluation, such as contests, competitions, ranking, commenting,
liking, and rating, which are taking place in digital environments. In doing
so, this book investigates the criteria and assessment practices tied to the
evaluation of creativity and artistic works and further questions what is
at stake when digital environments heighten the role of amateur and peer
criticism to the level of expert critiques. While exploring potential informal
learning opportunities and offering incisive critiques on the emerging norms
and standards of evaluation, the essays in this book cover a wide range of
artistic and creative practices.
Hiesun Cecilia Suhr is Assistant Professor of Digital Media at Miami
University–Hamilton and Affiliate Faculty in the Department of Art at
Miami University–Oxford, OH.
Routledge Studies in New Media and Cyberculture
1 Cyberpop 9 Mobile Technology and Place
Digital Lifestyles and Edited by Gerard Goggin
Commodity Culture and Rowan Wilken
Sidney Eve Matrix
10 Wordplay and the Discourse
2 The Internet in China of Video Games
Cyberspace and Civil Society Analyzing Words, Design,
Zixue Tai and Play
Christopher A. Paul
3 Racing Cyberculture
Minoritarian Art and Cultural 11 Latin American Identity
Politics on the Internet in Online Cultural
Christopher L. McGahan Production
Claire Taylor and Thea Pitman
4 Decoding Liberation
The Promise of Free and Open 12 Mobile Media Practices,
Source Software Presence and Politics
Samir Chopra and Scott D. Dexter The Challenge of Being
Seamlessly Mobile
5 Gaming Cultures and Place Edited by Kathleen M. Cumiskey
in Asia-Pacific and Larissa Hjorth
Edited by Larissa Hjorth
and Dean Chan 13 The Public Space of
Social Media
6 Virtual English Connected Cultures of the
Queer Internets and Digital Network Society
Creolization Thérèse F. Tierney
Jillana B. Enteen
14 Researching Virtual Worlds
7 Disability and New Media Methodologies for Studying
Katie Ellis and Mike Kent Emergent Practices
Edited by Ursula Plesner and
8 Creating Second Lives Louise Phillips
C ommunity, Identity and Spatiality
as Constructions of the Virtual 15 Digital Gaming Re-imagines
Edited by Astrid Ensslin and the Middle Ages
Eben Muse Edited by Daniel T. Kline
16 Social Media, Social Genres 20 Place and Politics in Latin
Making Sense of the Ordinary American Digital Culture
Stine Lomborg Location and Latin American
Net Art
17 The Culture of Digital Claire Taylor
Fighting Games
Performances and Practice 21 Online Games, Social
Todd Harper Narratives
Esther MacCallum-Stewart
18 Cyberactivism on the
Participatory Web 22 Locative Media
Edited by Martha McCaughey Edited by Rowan Wilken
and Gerard Goggin
19 Policy and Marketing
Strategies for Digital Media 23 Online Evaluation of
Edited by Yu-li Liu and Creativity and the Arts
Robert G. Picard Edited by Hiesun Cecilia Suhr
This page intentionally left blank
Online Evaluation of
Creativity and the Arts
Edited by Hiesun Cecilia Suhr
First published 2015
by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017
and by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group,
an informa business
© 2015 Taylor & Francis
The right of the editor to be identified as the author of the editorial
material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted
in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and
Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or
utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now
known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in
any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing
from the publishers.
Trademark Notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or
registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation
without intent to infringe.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Online evaluation of creativity and the arts / edited by Hiesun Cecilia Suhr.
pages cm — (Routledge studies in new media and cyberculture ; 23)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Communication and the arts. 2. Creative ability—Social aspects.
3. Art criticism. 4. Social media. I. Suhr, H. Cecilia (Hiesun Cecilia),
1979–editor of compilation.
NX180.C65O55 2015
700.28′7—dc23
2014013423
ISBN: 978-0-415-74985-5 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-79583-6 (ebk)
Typeset in Sabon
by Apex CoVantage, LLC
Contents
List of Figures and Tables ix
Acknowledgments xi
1 Introduction: Toward an Interdisciplinary Understanding
of Online Evaluation of Creativity and the Arts 1
HEISUN CECILIA SUHR
2 Revenge Rating and Tweak Critique at Photo.net 20
JOSEPH REAGLE
3 Link Love and Comment Karma: Norms and
Politics of Evaluation in the Fashion Blogosphere 41
BROOKE ERIN DUFFY
4 Who Judges the Judges? Evaluating Competition as
a Technique of Evaluation in Online Game Design Forums 60
AARON TRAMMELL
5 Constructing Learning through the Creative
Evaluation of Visual Arts Production 76
LINDA VIGDOR
6 Evaluation and Self-evaluation on YouTube:
Designing the Self in Makeup Tutorials 95
RAMON REICHERT
7 No Learning, No Spec: Spec Work Competitions
and the Spec Movement 112
HELEN KENNEDY
8 Unpacking the Shifting Landscape of Music Evaluation
in Indaba Music Contests 129
HEISUN CECILIA SUHR
viii Contents
9 Online Social Influence and the Evaluation of Creative
Practice: A Critique of Klout 150
ALESSANDRO GANDINI
Contributors 169
Index 171
Figures and Tables
FIGURES
8.1 Hottest Track and New Tracks 140
8.2 Indaba Music leaderboard 147
TABLES
9.1 Klout elaboration—Milan 159
9.2 Klout elaboration—London 159
