Now, that I'm done with my candidacy exam :), I want to share some thoughts on my latest reseach interest - politics- and news-oriented user-generated content (UGC).
First and foremost: What is it?
The practice of average citizens expressing their ideas to the masses has been here for centuries. Some of the ancestors and cousins of today’s online UGC include: posters and signs on walls, pamphlets, letters to the editor, calls to the talk radio programs, electronic bulletin board posts, open-source software, and many others. If the idea is not new, why talk about it today? Popularity is one answer. Today’s UGC is significantly more popular than any previous form, making it more influential (see my previous
post on this).
I find myself going back and forth from (a) there's nothing new under the sun, and therefore UGC is just a new "remix" of the old media "attributes" (see
Eveland, 2003); and (b) there is something unique about this new "remix" that's unprecedented and consequential.
One of the features that seem to explain UGC's popularity is that it allows for an integrated fulfillment of various needs. Individuals have many needs that they like to satisfying by using media (note 1). The more needs one can satisfy, the better for that individual’s psychological well-being. The more needs any given medium can satisfy, the better for that medium’s bottom line, as the success of “yellow journalism” and its today’s manifestation - the “infotainment” phenomenon - clearly illustrate (note 2). Indeed, individuals use many media for more reasons than just one. For example, news information is often utilized for both information (learning about the important happenings in one’s community) and diversion (entertaining oneself with odd, unusual, funny, and touching stories) (note 3). What seems to be novel today is that UGC offers individuals a “one-stop shopping mall” for gratifying many of their important needs simultaneously in a highly integrated fashion.
Shao suggests that today’s UGC allows individuals to fulfill the following three groups of needs almost simultaneously: (1) Self-expression and self-actualization, (2) social interaction and community development, and (3) information and entertainment. Of course, the degree of how much each of these groups of needs is important and is fulfilled by individuals will vary across individuals; but the point is that individuals now have a way to gratify many of these needs seamlessly in one convenient location. While many existing media can help gratify certain needs, the ease and efficiency of fulfilling many needs seems to be important. If individuals try to fulfill their informational need, but find that using some medium to obtain informational gratification is mentally vexing – individuals might give up and remain unsatisfied. However, if a certain medium allows individuals to effortlessly and effectively gratify their informational needs, while at the same time being entertained, feeling socially connected, and experiencing self-actualization and empowerment, the individual is likely to be thoroughly satisfied and encouraged to utilize the medium frequently.
We can go further in identifying more specific unique features of the UGC. Here are just three characteristics:
- Mass v. interpersonal communication. Blurring or even elimination of the distinction between mass and interpersonal communication (note 4), as both types of communication are present in context of UGC in a highly integrated fashion. This happens due to UGC and social media enabling individuals to communicate in “one-to-many” format (vertical, mass communication), as well as in “one-to-one” format (horizontal, interpersonal communication). This can be contrasted to a predominantly “one-to-many” format of information dissemination by traditional media (e.g., newspapers, television, radio), although today some traditional media adopt UGC characteristics – perhaps in order to aid with the marketing or information gathering efforts (note 5).
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Public v. private orientation. Social media also blur “public” v. “private” distinction (
Lange, 2007). In context of blogs, or social-networking sites it becomes unclear what form of communication (public or private) takes place when individuals post deeply intimate thoughts that can be viewed by anyone who happens to stumble upon this content. Personal and private communication, that has previously been taking place mostly among close friends and family member, now is published online and publicly accessible (see
Keen, 2008 for discussion on downsides of this trend). This occurs in contrast to the old communication practice where personal letters were clearly private, and where letters to the editor were clearly public, for example.
- Interactivity and audience activity. Audiences or consumers of information that characterized “old” communication formats are now participants in communication and “prosumers” (note 6) of content in contexts of UGC and social media. Audience activity is significantly increased, as they (co)create content that they publish online, they intensively communicate with others via various communication options (email, IM, digital “wall” posts, etc.), they react to one another’s opinion expression (blog posts, picture comments, community rating of content, etc.). Admittedly, F2F communication, which existed before, is characterized by the same richness and intensiveness of interpersonal interactions; however, such interactivity is enabled in contexts that go beyond F2F communication. Such audience activity has never occurred in regards to traditional “mass” communication contexts.
These seem to represent what most forms of UGC share.
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Notes:
1. A variety of research exists on this in psychology and communication. See, for example, Gans, H.J. (1979). Deciding What’s News: A Study of CBS Evening News, NBC Nightly News, Newsweek and Time. New York: Pantheon Books; and Zillmann, D. (1988). Mood management through communication choices. American Behavioral Scientist, 31(3), 327-340.
2. See this very interesting analysis of political blogs: Woodly, D. (2008). New competencies in democratic communication? Blogs, agenda setting and political participation. Public Choice, 134: 109-123.
3. See this influential examination of political news consumption: Graber, D. A. (1988). Processing the News. New York: Longman.
4. One of my favorite articles talks about this: Chaffee, S. H., & Metzger, M. J. (2001). The end of mass communication? Mass Communication & Society, 4(4): 365-379.
5. See some of Dr. Kosicki and my theorizing on this: Dylko, I. B., & Kosicki, G. M. (2006, August). Sociology of news and new media: How the blogosphere transforms our understanding of journalism and changes news. Paper presented at Communication Technology Division at the 2006 Association for Education in Journalism & Mass Communication Annual Convention, San Francisco, CA.
6. A very insightful article on UGC: Van Dijck J. (2009). Users like you? Theorizing agency in user-generated content. Media, Culture & Society, 31(1), 41-58
