Handle with care: personalisation technologies in the creative process

This paper applies the sociocultural perspective of the systems model of creativity to explore the influence of digital media on the creative process of advertising art directors and copywriters. Analysis of interviews with 18 Australian art directors and copywriters reveals the role of information and communication technologies (ICTs) in the creative process as a source of knowledge and inspiration. Importantly, this analysis identifies a series of practitioner concerns about exposure to ubiquitous digital media platforms, such as Google and Facebook. The nature of this apprehension is discussed with reference to the “algorithmic gatekeeping” that is employed by widely applied ICTs to personalise digital media content based on a user’s past experiences and other collected data. There can be little doubt that algorithmic gatekeeping and personalisation provide art directors and copywriters with the ability to easily access the research materials they require, yet a series of less obvious losses emerge as these ICTs seek to prioritise familiar rather than entropic media content and in doing so have the potential to intensify existing concerns about practices that inhibit successful ideation.