User-generated content
User-generated content (UGC) refers to any media—text, images, audio, or video—that is created and shared by individuals rather than traditional publishers. This phenomenon gained traction with the emergence of social networking sites and platforms for sharing reviews and multimedia in the early 2000s, providing everyday users with unprecedented opportunities to publish and disseminate their work. UGC is characterized by its accessibility, creative effort, and often the lack of financial expectation from contributors, although some users do seek monetary rewards.
The growth of UGC has significantly influenced areas such as journalism, advertising, and commerce, allowing for a shift in how information is produced and shared. However, this shift has also raised issues surrounding copyright law, as content often incorporates or references copyrighted materials without proper permissions. Legal protections for service providers hosting UGC complicate these challenges, creating a contentious environment for copyright owners. Additionally, while many news organizations have embraced UGC to enhance their offerings, the reliance on user contributions has sparked debate over the credibility and quality of the information presented. Despite these challenges, UGC has also empowered creators by enabling them to build personal brands and foster direct connections with audiences.
On this Page
Subject Terms
User-generated content
The term “user-generated content” encompasses all forms of media published by individual online contributors as opposed to traditional publishers. User-generated content includes all text, images, audio, and video posted by the contributors to blogs, wikis, social networking sites and forums, and feedback- and review-sharing websites. The rise of user-generated content in the first decade of the twenty-first century has had a profound impact on journalism, copyright law, advertising and marketing, publishing, and commerce.
Overview
User-generated content (UGC) came to prominence with the debut of social networking websites (such as MySpace in 2003 and Facebook in 2004), review-sharing websites (such as Yelp in 2004), and image- and video-sharing platforms (such as Flickr in 2004 and YouTube in 2005). These websites gave a large portion of the general public, who had previously only been the consumers of or audience for published content, access to wide distribution channels for their self-published content.
In 2007, the Organization of Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) proposed three key characteristics of user-generated content, saying that such content has been published in some form, required some creative effort to produce, and is typically created without the expectation of financial gain. However, many critics contend that the OECD’s definition of user-generated content is too narrow, pointing to the large number of individuals who post copyright-infringing material to UGC sites without any creative effort on their part and to the increasing number of users who post to such sites for financial reimbursement.
The rise of user-generated content presents a number of challenges to copyright holders. User-generated content is often based on or includes copyrighted material, such as music, film, or images. Copyright owners are frustrated that their content is available online for consumers without any financial reimbursement. However, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998 limits the liability of online service providers for hosting copyright-infringing materials on their websites, as long as the online service provider has reasonable policies in place for flagging and removing copyrighted material. In order to avoid liability, the online service provider must terminate the accounts of users who repeatedly upload copyrighted content and cooperate with copyright owners’ efforts to identify and protect their copyrighted works. Several major lawsuits, such as Viacom International v. YouTube, have challenged the limits on service providers’ liability for hosting copyrighted works, but judges often throw out these cases if they lack evidence that the service provider actively induced its users to upload copyrighted materials.
A number of major newspapers have integrated user-generated content onto their websites in the form of blogs. Publishers and journalists are looking at user-generated content as a way to cheaply supplement or even replace traditional news-gathering practices. However, while readers value user-submitted, news-based content, such as eyewitness reports and photographs or video of an event, they dislike opinion-based contributions, which are viewed as biased and ill-informed and can threaten the reputation of a news outlet. User-generated content has encroached on the market share of publishers and, in some cases, has rendered certain publications obsolete. In 2010, Encyclopædia Britannica discontinued the 242-year-old print edition of its encyclopedia, in part because of competition from user-generated wikis that offer a cheap and easily updateable alternative to traditional printed reference works. On the other hand, user-generated content has helped to launch the careers of several artists and entertainers, giving them the ability to control their image and garner a large audience online.
Bibliography
Ayeh, Julian K., Norman Au, and Rob Law. “‘Do We Believe in TripAdvisor?’ Examining Credibility Perceptions and Online Travelers’ Attitudes toward Using User-Generated Content.” Journal of Travel Research 52.4 (2013): 437–52. Print.
Flanagin, Andrew J., and Miriam J. Metzger. “Trusting Expert- versus User-Generated Ratings Online: The Role of Information Volume, Valence, and Consumer Characteristics.” Computers in Human Behavior 29.4 (2013): 1626–34. Print.
Lih, Andrew. The Wikipedia Revolution: How a Bunch of Nobodies Created the World’s Greatest Encyclopedia. New York: Hyperion, 2009. Print.
Ochoa, Xavier, and Erik Duval. “Quantitative Analysis of User-Generated Content on the Web.” Proceedings of the First International Workshop on Understanding Web Evolution. Beijing: Web Evolve, 2008. PDF file.
Salah, Almila Akdag, et al. “Combining Cultural Analytics and Networks Analysis: Studying a Social Network Site with User-Generated Content.” Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media 57.3 (2013): 409–26. Print.
Vickery, Graham, and Sacha Wunsch-Vincent. Participative Web and User-Created Content: Web 2.0, Wikis and Social Networking. Paris: OECD, 2007. PDF file.
Wahl-Jorgensen, Karin, Andrew Williams, and Claire Wardle. “Audience Views of User-Generated Content: Exploring the Value of News from the Bottom Up.” Northern Lights: Film and Media Studies Yearbook 8.1 (2010): 177–94. Print.