Building an online collaborative platform to advance creativity

Online interactive and social networking can play a vital role in cultivating an ‘unspoken’ cyber culture that may shape users' opinions, sense of belonging, and values amongst the youths. As youths immerse themselves in using sophisticated interactive media, they are not only articulating ideas and thoughts; they are also sharing their beliefs and values, hence influencing others to adopt a new cyber culture. Indeed, participatory online culture describes a community which offers support and mentorship to members as they feel they are connected to others and that their contributions matter. This paper proposes an online collaborative framework to provide youths a fun and innovative platform to communicate, collaborate and create via simple animation and story-telling techniques. In providing youths a new avenue for expressing their artistic talents in an informal environment, we hope to understand the context in which they use social media to form a popular culture.