Throughout the course, I started to understand the dynamic between the experience of media art and the creation of media art. In the past, media experience consisted of fixed films which were watched start to finish, photographs were merely viewed, and the role of the viewer to shape and influence format was minimal. In the past, media creation also honored the role of the author/contributor. The author’s vision took priority over the work. These days, the creation of media involves planning media experiences. In other words, media creation involves planning linear works. The new media allows viewers to take part and influence. In other words, new media involves participating, choosing, and remixing. The creation of media projects enabled me to see why media creation and media experience are currently interlinked. When completing the found media project, I engaged with what it is to work with older media. In older media, meaning is shaped by juxtaposition. In the completion of the hypertext escape project, I engaged with what it is to work on new media. Completing new media involves shaping spaces, not stories, which are shaped nonlinearly.

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This is very relevant to the second question of what crowdsharing and crowdsourcing mean to society. Social media platforms such as TikTok, YouTube, Twitter, and even more participatory platforms such as Twine are built on crowd participation. The media is not produced by a select few ‘gatekeepers’ anymore, but is crowd-sourced by millions of people and bits and pieces of media. This is very democratizing, and people are able to not only tell stories but also to comment, to create, and to curate. Of course, it also changes the notion of identity and power. As Wesch and McLuhan have argued, "the environment we design creates the environment that designs us." With crowdsharing, society has not only become more interconnected but also very performative. "We curate ourselves to an invisible audience, and our realities are mediated by algorithms which filter what we see.”

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However, it is also important to recognize that such a participatory media system also creates new possibilities for creative expression. In the case of my Twitter horror story, such a narrative could only ever have meaning within the specific cultural context of social media, which combines posting, humor, and oversharing. These community media platforms enable narratives to take on a communal, and not to mention time- and place-specific, quality. What such a media system ultimately enables is the understanding that media is not merely something we consume, it is also something we produce.