User:Svolkenand/sandbox

User-generated content (UGC) describes any online content, information or media that is created by the users of online platforms. Unlike private messages, user-generated content is usually available for a limited or general public. The content is not necessarily completely created by a user, it can also be a re-framed version of existing content. User-generated content can be seen as part of the Web 2.0 and participatory culture.

Origins
User-generated content is linked to web 2.0 and online culture. However, scholar Claudia Wyrwoll compares user-generated content with earlier Speakers’ Corners, the only “possibility that private individuals, who do not happen to be journalists and do not have a publisher, could reach people they did not know”. Henry Jenkins sees the roots of the circulating and re-framing content in the scrapbooking practices starting in the 19th century: Mostly women collected bits from newspapers and magazine and created their own art from it.

Forms
User-generated content comes in multiple forms. An example of UGC are online reviews, in which users give their opinions on products or services. Online reviews are considered much more credible than advertisements due to their authenticity and word-of-mouth mechanisms. Another part of UGC is contribution based knowledge production, as it happens on Wikipedia. All forms of fanart, fan fiction and contributions in online fan forums can also be considered as user-generated content.

Marketing tool
User-generated content is a concept of interest for strategic brand management purposes. Due to investments of brands and media companies over the past years, brand strategist and scholar Ulrike Arnold sees the “creation purpose of UCG shifting from non-profit to profit”. She describes user generated branding as the practice of managing brand-related user generated content.

Criticisms and concerns
Media scholar Henry Jenkins criticizes the leverage of user-generated content as marketing tool, as it “ignore[s] the larger history and power of participatory culture in attempting to define collaboration wholly on corporate terms.” He argues that commercial concepts including UGC lack understanding of the users’ position: They are not employees, paid for creating and circulating branded content. Their motivation is not the economic gain of a brand, but their personal reasons, like their individual investment with a website or product or their social status within an online community. Questions of copyrights are another critical point and concerns both users that use existing content and companies that use UGC for commercial purposes.

As Jenkins puts it, user-generated content based on existing media content can not only be seen as a violation of copyrights: The creators help to spread and thereby promote the original content by re-framing and sharing it. Bauer agrees with the statement that the topic is not clearly regulated yet. He describes the creation of UGC as a two-fold act: First, the user creates a piece of media content, and second, he or she publishes it online. Bauer argues that these two acts must be perceived as different, as only the second one raises legal questions of copyright violation.