Exploring Individual Creativity Components of Anime Videos via Content Analysis: A Case Study of Bilibili

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, 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 study since it is flexible for text and non-text data. This study applied the componential theory of creativity to identify the 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 study synthesized the frequency and ratios of creativity components and the general distribution of components across anime videos on Bilibili. Among the sample of 20 anime videos, the results indicate that creativity-relevant processes occurred most frequently, which best demonstrated creativity, followed by domain-relevant skills and affective state. In contrast, intrinsic task motivation occurred least frequently, which showed less attention in anime video creativity. Eventually, suggestions for the individual creativity components for creating anime videos on the Bilibili platform were revealed in the conclusion.