Reeling in Stories: An Investigation of Creative Behaviors and Creativity‐Support on Instagram

Abstract

ABSTRACTCreative behaviors are increasingly impacted by digital technologies, but little is known about the way digital technologies support everyday creativity and what factors predict their creative use. We investigated to what extent individual differences in person‐specific (creativity, personality) and platform‐specific (e.g., perceived creativity support) characteristics relate to the creative use of Instagram. The results from a sample of 191 Instagram users revealed that more frequent creative use of Instagram was related to greater engagement in everyday creative behaviors, creative self‐beliefs, the openness facet of creative imagination, extraversion, a more positive attitude toward Instagram, greater platform‐related self‐efficacy, and greater perceived creativity‐support. Regression analysis further revealed a unique contribution of everyday creativity, creative personal identity, extraversion, attitude toward Instagram, Instagram self‐efficacy, and perceived creativity‐support for creative use of Instagram. Although creativity was not the most central motive for using Instagram, the results from the present study indicated considerable levels of creative use, suggesting that common online spheres are important for everyday creative behavior. Together, this study identified relevant person‐ and platform‐specific factors predicting creative behavior at Instagram, while also highlighting the relevance of creativity in the digital world even outside of devoted digital creativity tools.