The Rise and Rise of UGC ..

Is reality becoming more real? The rise and rise of UGC ..

1. What is meant by the term 'citizen journalist'?

The audience have become 'users' and the users have become publishers. Audiences now create their own content. We're in the era of user generated content (UGC) where the old divide between institution and audience is being eroded.

2. What was one of the first examples of news being generated by 'ordinary people'? 

The first example of news being generated by ordinary people was way back in 1991 when someone recorded Los Angeles police officers beating Rodney King, an African-American after a high speed chase, the surrounded him, tasered him and beat him with clubs 53 times. This whole event was filmed by an onlooker from his apartment window. The home-video footage made prime-time news became an international media sensation, and a focus for complaints about police racism towards African-Americans. 

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

Most news organisations include formats for participation: 

• Message boards 
• Chat rooms 
• Q&A 
• Polls 
• Have your says
• Blogs with comments enabled.

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

The main differences between professionally shot footage and that taken first-hand is the fact that a lot of the time the first-hand footage is raw and uncompromising and also it's more "hard-hitting" and emotive. An audience used to relatively unmediated reality through the prevalence of reality TV can now see similarly unmediated footage on the news. 

5. What is a gatekeeper? 

Gatekeepers are the editors and journalist, they decided what's news worthy, they get to decided what news is or isn't is and that's what they put on their newspapers or websites or television. If they believe a story isn't important they won't put it in the news, they have control over everything.

6. How has the role of a gate keeper changed?

The role of a gate keeper has changed though user generated content, a lot of people can now just over look the journalist and editors and put their stores online, social networking sites, blogs or even chat rooms.

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

In the future there will be fewer and fewer permanent trained staff at news organisations, leaving a smaller core staff who will manage and process UGC from citizen journalists, sometimes known as 'crowd soucing.' Some believe that the mediators and moderators might eventually disappear too, leaving a world where the media is, finally, unmediated. 

8. Notes ..

• Without moderation sites could be overrun by bigots or fools, by those who shout loudest, and those who have little else to do but make posts.
•  The risk of being dominated by defamatory or racist or other hate-fuelled content raises questions about unmoderated content: ‘free speech’ is great as long as you agree with what everybody is saying!
• If there will be fewer jobs for trained journalists, will there also be less profit for the big institutions? This seems unlikely. 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.