User-Generated Content

Online discussion boards, threads, user chat rooms, instant messaging have all been around for many years now. Now however, people online are able to discuss, debate, rate, and share more than ever with  the integration of Web 2.0.  However, while it seems simple and mostly unsophisticated, it is an outlet of controversies.

"Web 2.0 is a concept that takes the network as a platform for information sharing, interoperability, user-centered design, and collaboration on the Internet or World Wide Web. A Web 2.0 site allows users to interact and collaborate with each other in asocial media dialogue as creators (prosumers) of user-generated content in a virtual community, in contrast to websites where users (consumers) are limited to the passive viewing of content that was created for them." (Wikipedia, 2012).

User-generated content is communities of people with shared goals and objectives, seeking out new information for the greater good. Pierre Levy has coined this idea into the term "Collective Intelligence". With the new age of social networking, apps, and integration of softwares and platforms, people have been able to connect all over the world on any topic their hearts desire. When people are given a utility to broadcast their voice, it gives them power. This interconnectivity allows and brings back creativity. Consumers become creators. People don’t just have to listen to others knowledge but are allowed to express themselves, add ideas or advice to current ideals or theories. It gives people the chance to stand up for what they believe in, instead of being labeled or clumped together with whatever political and corporate powers believe the masses should believe. Since any average Joe now has this more power than ever before, this freedom of expression, freedom to connect, is problematic for different reasons and different entities. Media fandom guru, Henry Jenkins, believes "collective intelligence will gradually alter ways commodity culture operates".

• User-generated content allows for people to critique current hegemony. 
• User-generated content leaves the experts behind and makes the Internet even more haphazard and reckless. 
• User-genrated content crosses lines of copyright and ownership

When people are connected all over the world, with freedom of press, with no limits, and in modes of interest and similarities, gaps of international relations and suspicions are compressed. Citizens can debate, share, and organize against political identities. Consumers no longer have to put faith in what a company promises their service or product’s value, but can decide based on others experiences. However, how do you put your faith in? How does one know if another's "testimonial" is based on accuracy and honesty? There is so much posted or "published" out there. How does one know if someone already has published an idea? Does posting online automatically give it credibility and ownership? Larry Lessig made the observation that kids are knowingly and willingly breaking the law. So does the government punish the masses, or does it study the evolution and make changes to the rules? Will it ever go too far? If complete democracy is chaos, will there be a solution or a limit set in place before there is anarchy?

I do not have the answers to these questions. In fact, I don't think anyone, not Google, nor Microsoft nor any media master has been able to answer. However, I believe there's an ethical need to be a way to test and approve credibility, honesty, accuracy that should be addressed with priority (depending on where or what the content is on). 

Here are my experiences with my personal life and work:

Personal: If something really stands out to me, I’ll “like” it, or give it a “+1”. However, if a company really disappoints me, I’ll write a negative review. The middlemen usually get left out. However, it really has helped me because being a college student on a limited income, I don’t want to chance spending money on a bad experience. This new age makes businesses more reliable, more than when reviews were by word of mouth or by an expert critique to read in a published paper. Most of the time however, I enjoy the fact that I am able to easily access others opinions, and glad I do not have to post my own. I think Amazon.com is the most incredible use of user-generated content as well as algorithms to connect them in different ways. 

Work: One of my biggest pet peeves is logging into my company's website, seeing there are new comments, and then realizing they are spam; user-generated content that has no relativity to our company to drive traffic somewhere else. Most of the times, the comments left aren’t even in English. We still have an old-age way of doing things where we add clients testimonials to our site ourselves. We do not make up any of our testimonials, however the few negative responses we have received are not published. At the same time, these clients have the ability to log on to a plethora of websites to make remarks or rate our company, negative or positive, which has been almost non-existent, aside from a few "recommendations" on our Facebook Page that we got from having a contest based on if someone wrote one.

Jenkins, H. The Cultural Logic of Media Convergence, 2004
Wikipedia "Web 2.0" Updated: October 1, 2012 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_2.0
Larry Lessig: Laws that Choke Creativity, Ted Talks, March 2007 http://www.ted.com/talks/larry_lessig_says_the_law_is_strangling_creativity.html

Picture borrowed from http://www.mediosenlared.es/tag/sustainability-of-social-networks/