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Creative Production 245focus of this chapter tend not to be segregated by age, though all havestrong youth participation. As with chapter 5, we include accounts byyoung adults who participate in these groups, and we draw on retrospectiveaccounts of how they got involved in creative production. The chapteris organized as a progression from these messing around genres of participationtoward deepening immersion in geeked out participation centeredon creative production. We are not assuming that kids necessarily movein a linear fashion from hanging out, to messing around, to geeking out.In fact, kids will often move fluidly back and forth between these genres.Rather, we use this as an organizing heuristic to present the different genresof participation available to youth that involve digital media production.After introducing our conceptual framework for production, new media,and learning, we begin our description with practices of everyday, personalmedia production—the creation and sharing of personal photos, videos,and online profiles. After describing a range of practices of media creationand sharing, we turn to a consideration of how young people transitionto practices that they self-identify as “media production” and the creationof works that are circulated beyond personal networks. How do youngpeople get started on practices such as video production and editing, webcomics, or machinima? From there the chapter describes how young peopleimprove on their craft in the context of digital media production andonline exchange. What kind of creative communities and collaborationsdo youth engage in through the course of producing new media? Whatare the mechanisms they describe for how they improved their craft? Andfinally, how do they gain audiences and receive recognition and fame fortheir work? In the conclusion, we discuss the implications of our ethnographicfindings for media education.Creative Production in the Digital AgeWhat constitutes “creative work” is contested by scholars. The term traditionallyhas been used to describe “imaginative” or “expressive” work,where “expressive” refers to sharing aspects of the self (Sefton-Green 2000,8). Our understanding of what constitutes creative production includesimaginative and expressive forms that are also shaped by kids’ individualchoices and available media. The influx of digital media into everydaylife is reshaping these understandings, particularly our assumptions about