Is reality becoming more real? The rise and rise of UGC: Notes and questions

Notes

Examples:

• The 4 police caught on camera beating up a man
• The tsunami had accidental journalism- people's holiday videos became accounts and news footage providing information for the event.
• Seung-Hui Cho and Jamal- filmed the event rather than saved his life to get good footage of the event
• Mumbai bombings were covered by Flickr and Twitter- the live element of twitter made the information current and up to date-accessed by the world
• Hudson river plane crash- Janis Krun tweeted how she was to help the suvivors

Insitution benefit:

• As there are many money making sites, institutions just have to buy sites rather than launching new ones

Audience benefit:

• The help of social networking sites allowed people's UGC help survivors find their families.
• Niche topic on the e-media platform become acessible to a wide audience
• Subordinated groups now have a voice in the media today

Issues and debates:

• The impact of reality TV on the real world- people would rather film events to be famous than save their own lives.
• Mediation- does seing unmediated content still convey meaning. Does this mean we lose trust in mediated and therefore professional content?
• Media and ownership- could this freedom of UGC mean certain groups will try and take over- e.g. discriminative groups

SHEP

Social: anyone can be a producer- doesn't matter about your background

Historical: news use to come from journalists and professionals, but now ordinary people can produce content for news

Economical: It is clearly cost free for ordinary people to produce their own content. This means that some people will lose jobs due to the fewer needed journalists.

Political: The governement will have less control over the media as individuals create their own. This means content will have different ideologies and conflicts- some content could also be offencive causig political problems

Questions

1. "Citizen journalist", "grassroots journalists", or "accidental journalists" is when news or media content is created by normal people.

2. The first example of UGC:

Four police were caught attacking a man
Someone recorded the event on their mobile
It became the first piece of UCG- aired on the news
A form of information for masses

3. Organisations have provided forms of participation such as: message boards, chat rooms, Q&A, polls, have your says, and blogs with comments enabled.

4. The main difference between professional footage and UCG is the quality- it is poor which makes it more realistic and therefore more emotive.

5. A gate keeper controls what is news worthy and worth broadcasting.

6. Gate keepers now need to focus on the content thats is on the web (e-media).

7. More people producing their own content means there is less need for the professional journalists- they have to get paid while UCG producers don't- however they can make money if they want to.