Participation and User Created Content- Reading Three

Hinton and Hjorth’s chapter on ‘Participation and User Created Content’ in Understanding Social Media provides a description of the differences between UGC and UCC.

User Generated Content (UGC): Information shared on sites that may interest others. This can be as simple as the information such as a birth date on a social media profile that assists data mining.

User Created Content (UCC): Online content created by anyone that requires social, cultural or economic resources. This content is created with the intention of others engaging in it.

The concept of a produser: Producer and User.

As a two way medium, social media requires participation, although this can be culturally specific, especially when considering China’s laws regarding the internet. This has resulted in an irregular development of participation around the world due to the cultural, social and economic factors facing nations.

Audiences are being referred to as producers when they create the content themselves. Cultural theorist Henry Jenkins considered the fans to be the producers in the way that they individually interpret the content and draw their own meaning, therefore create.

The concept of Pro-Am (a professional amateur) is introduced as an individual who produces a professional standard of work (including a professional standard of quality and effort), but does not receive any monetary benefits. They’re the people that do it purely for the passion. These individuals often contribute to YouTube, a social media site that feasts on attention seeking material created by the users.

Crowd sourcing has proven useful for solving problems that a single individual is incapable of solving on their own. There have been numerous failures in this concept when individuals abuse the system for their own benefit as opposed to helping a group. Similarly, Wikipedia has been known for containing false information due to individuals taking advantage of the system, the creators believe that the site’s accuracy will improve overtime.

The concept of citizen journalism developed through a cross over between traditional news reporting and the participatory nature of social media. Citizen journalism has developed through the ease at which individuals can and are encouraged to report information. This concept was established through blogs and the frequency of individuals reporting through capturing and uploading content to YouTube instantaneously. These reports are then easily and quickly shared through social media channels. This reporting has helped with manage natural disasters by relaying information to those in need.

The citizen journalism reports are known for their amateur style which make the delivery of information more believable and ‘intimate’. This has caused a dramatic financial loss for print media due the rising popularity of this journalism style.

There are have been positive responses to the live tweeting phenomenon, although some Australian news papers have criticised the platform for allowing incorrect information to be promoted that hasn’t been written by professionals and lacks the editorial process. This style of journalism also doesn’t include professional codes of conduct and legal protection for the writers. Hinton and Hjorth relates the comments made to an online news report as similar to letters to the editor.

Online activism has been greatly influenced by the popularity of social media, the ease at which individuals are able to share an idea and organise like-minded people to assist in protesting against the issue. The internet has been known for it’s democratic freedom, but once again social media has accentuated this and encouraged easy involvement.

Smart mobs are an example of the minimum notice required to arrange a group of like-minded people to gather for a social or political purpose. The social media tools including Twitter and Facebook were utilised by intelligent youths to communicate with governments during the Arab Spring. These social media sites ‘…provide a virtual rallying point for activists’ (Hinton and Hjorth, 2013 p. 73).

Concepts such as clicktivism (supporting causes by signing online petitions or clicking ‘like’) and slacktivism (considered the lazy form of activism, doing nothing more than clicking ‘like’) are discussed in relation to these large political gatherings. Online activism is criticised for it’s tendency to simplify complicated issues and to trick the public into believing the well designed media content, seen in KONY 2012’s campaign.