UGC Article

The Rise & Rise of UGC

Key Facts on the UGC article. Question & Answers are below

“New technologies mean that the audiences are no longer passive receivers of news. The audience have become ‘users’ and the users have become publishers. Audiences now create their own content.”

Key to this change has been the development of new technologies such as video phones and the growth of the internet and user-dominated sites.

A citizen became a journalist by recording Los Angeles police beating up an African American, which caused controversy amongst African Americans and protests were held where people died and were injured. This was one of the first examples of the news being generated by ‘ordinary people,’ now commonly known as ‘citizen journalists’, ‘grassroots journalists’, or even ‘accidental journalists’.

Millions of people have constant access to filming capability through their mobiles, and footage can be uploaded and rapidly distributed on the internet.

UGC now plays a huge role in many aspects of the media. Most news organisations include formats for participation: message boards, chat rooms, Q&A, polls, have your says, and blogs with comments enabled.

Social media sites are also built around UGC as seen in the four biggest social networking sites: Bebo, MySpace, YouTube and Facebook. People also turn to UGC sites to access news: Wikipedia news, Google news and YouTube score highly in terms of where people go to get their news.

The natural disaster of the Asian Tsunami on December 26th 2004 was another turning point for UGC. Much of the early footage of events was provided from citizen journalists, or ‘accidental journalists,’ providing on-the-spot witness accounts of events as they unfolded. Tourists who would otherwise have been happily filming holiday moments were suddenly recording one of the worst natural disasters in recent times. In addition, in the days after the disaster, social networking sites provided witness accounts for a world-wide audience, helped survivors and family members get in touch and acted as a forum all those involved to share their experiences.

We now expect passers by, witnesses, or even victims, to whip out their camera phones and record events, an instinct almost as powerful as that to save their own or others’ lives. Perhaps the news now seems old-fashioned and somehow staged if it lacks the raw, grainy low-quality footage provided by citizen journalists.

Twitter can provide breaking news faster than news organizations. It is now a source which gives you updates within seconds. On the other hand it is free for all audiences to access and use.

Are the gatekeepers still fulfilling their old function of deciding what is and isn’t news, and what will and won’t be broadcast? In some ways, yes. You can send in as much UGC to the major news organisations as you want, with no guarantee that any of it will ever be aired

Some believe that the mediators and moderators might eventually disappear too, leaving a world where the media is, finally, unmediated.

Although how to ‘monetarise’ UGC – how to make money for both the generator and the host of the content – is still being debated, bigger institutions have been buying up social networking sites for the last few years. Rather than launch their own challenge, they simply buy the site. Flickr is now owned by Yahoo!, YouTube was bought by Google, Microsoft invested in Facebook, and News Corp., owned by Murdoch, bought MySpace.

There is a whole new world out there. With it comes new responsibility. There is enormous potential to expand our view of the world and our understanding of what is happening. Our collective knowledge, and wisdom, should grow. On the other hand, in twenty years time, the news could be overrun by pictures of people’s kittens and a few bigots shouting across message boards at each other

Sara Mills AQA Examiner

What is meant by the term ‘citizen journalist’?

Citizen journalist is when a consumer becomes a producer of something. A journalist is someone who provides news to its reader/consumer, through news institutions. But a citizen journalist is when a normal reader/ consumer produces his/hers own media text for others to read and use. The citizen journalist isn’t a qualified journalist but by the power of the internet, he/she can upload their views and points by online blogs, news sites and polls etc.

What was one of the first examples of news being generated by ‘ordinary people’?

One of the first examples is the car chase in LA, which is stated above in the research, in which policemen were caught beating a man with golf clubs and tasering him. This was uploaded by a citizen journalist on the internet; this video had caught police over using their authority. This was an ordinary man who came across this brutal attack which he decided to film from his handset and upload on the internet for users to witness. This lead to the dismissal of the police officers as it was clear evidence of what they had done. This is the positive affect of UGC & Citizen Journalists.

List some of the formats for participation that are now offered by news organisations.

Participation offered by the news organisations for consumers to participate and have their say on are:

Message boards

Q&A

Polls

YouTube comments

Facebook (Messages on the wall)/ twitter (sending in comments which are answered straight away)

What is one of the main differences between professionally shot footage and that taken first-hand (UGC)?

First hand footage is less edited and states clearly what happened.

Professional footage can be tweaked and edited to the producer’s choice.

Professional footage also uses hi tech quality camera’s which allows consumers to have a better news experience, rather than a first-hand fizzy/blurry phone capturing breaking news.

What is a gatekeeper?

Gatekeepers are people who decide what goes in the news and what doesn’t, they edit what they want and have the power to tweak stories to attract audiences to their news organizations.

How has the role of a gatekeeper changed?

Due to the freedom of the internet and UGC, gatekeepers now find it hard to keep things hidden from consumers. They now have less power as citizen journalists are uploading their own articles with footage or images as evidence. Consumers now find UGC articles more interesting and trust worthy than what large news organisations provide because of the awareness of gatekeepers. This falls into the argument of “are news organizations editing the news to make it more entertaining and attractive to draw in audiences.”

What is one of the primary concerns held by journalists over the rise of UGC?

As people are turning to UGC and avoiding newspapers, there is a decrease in journalist jobs which could affect people with journalist degrees and people currently studying journalism.  The internet and citizen journalists has taken over these job roles for the journalists and now institutions only wants to keep the best of the best, which increases competition for journalists to get a job and make a good living.

B. Find and watch a YouTube citizen journalism clip for each of the examples listed in the article (the Rodney King beating, the Asian Tsunami, the 7/7 bombings, the Virginia Tech shootings, the Mumbai bombings, the Hudson River plane crash) and embed them on your blog.

Below is a video from a citizen journalist ..