Exploring individual creativity components via content analysis of anime videos: a case study of Bilibili

Abstract

The development of video-sharing platforms has impacted and stimulated the anime creation online, as well as creativity in anime videos. Yet, compared to other platforms, Bilibili, an online video-sharing platform with great potential, is rarely mentioned. As one of the most popular anime communities among the young generation in China, Bilibili contains the biggest content of anime videos while enjoying a high level of audience engagement. Despite this, plenty of negative feedback on anime videos online hindered the progress of anime creation creativity. Moreover, the specific underlying components of individual creativity in anime videos on Bilibili were not explained enough. Thus, it provides an opportunity to explore the individual creativity components and provide suggestions for improving the anime video creation on Bilibili. In order to understand individual creativity components in anime videos, content analysis becomes a suitable method in this research since it is flexible for text and non-text data. Besides, this research also applied the componential theory of creativity to identify the major components as domain-relevant skills, creativity-relevant processes, intrinsic task motivation, and affective state. A coding framework was developed as a crucial part of content analysis to analyze the transcription of anime videos on Bilibili. Accordingly, this research synthesized the frequency, ratios and general distribution of creativity components in anime videos on Bilibili. An experiment and online questionnaire were conducted to examine the viewers’ feedback responding to creative anime videos and audience preference towards the creativity components. Among the sample of 20 anime videos on Bilibili, the results indicate that creativity-relevant processes occurred most frequently, which best demonstrated creativity, while intrinsic task motivation occurred least frequently with less attention in anime videos. Anime viewers’ feedback gained from 15 participants generally maintained positive. Moreover, the questionnaire toward the four creativity components with a mean value between 3.83 and 4.30 also shows a high-level audience preference. Eventually, suggestions for improving creativity while creating anime videos on Bilibili were revealed based on the results.