User-Generated Content in British Journalism
"Hold on, I'm taking horizontal video just in case," is a sentence I have said to my friends way too many times during my semester abroad. (Also PSA: Folks, make sure you always take your videos horizontally! That is how they are meant to be taken and seen!) Whether it has been various protests I've come across or even generic videos of a cool city, I'm very aware that the footage I take could be valuable to a news organization at some point. Granted, I am a self-proclaimed news nerd and an aspiring journalist, but the fact of the matter is that you do not need an expensive (and absurdly heavy) piece of camera equipment for your video to be valuable. The rise of technology has made it easy for the average person to simply whip out their phone and post a video to social media, and these videos might then be sought after by major news organizations and featured on air.
Take, for example, the Notre Dame fire. Many news organizations included videos taken by people in Paris at the time - not necessarily journalists who had their hefty cameras with them. In a world where news is only created and spread by professionals who drag their equipment to locations in order to report, we would not have had such easy access to the information and the live updates. Social media, although now an important contributor to the news gathering process, is not the only way common people are playing a larger role in journalism.
The rise of user-generated content, or UGC, has shifted the relationship between journalists and audience members. Now, audience members are more connected to what journalists are writing, and different forms of UGC have became prevalent in British journalism. However, controversy still remains as to whether UGC helps or hinders journalism; while it opens up the door to a wave of new information, it increases the need to vet and validate that same information.
Personally, I believe UGC can be a very helpful component in journalism. At the end of the day, the institution of journalism relies on the relationship between the journalist and the audience. It is the role of the journalist to bring matters around the world to light for the average person, and the evolution of technology has created change in the relationship between these two forces. At the same time, although it is important to gather outside sources, it is just as important to vet through these sources to ensure everything is still accurate and unbiased. For this reason, UGC has created a lot of potential issues in U.K. journalism, and the institution is struggling to adjust to this changing landscape where the average person is getting a larger voice than they may have the qualifications for. It is extremely important to understand all the flaws that can arise with UGC in order to preserve the integrity and accuracy required in journalism. In particular, major organizations such as the BBC and The Guardian have implemented guidelines for UGC in their models.
What is User-Generated Content?
This one is pretty straight-forward if you just use context clues. User-generated content is content used in journalism that comes... wait for it... from users! UGC doesn't come directly from professional journalists, and allows the "ordinary" person to engage with media outlets in various ways.
There are many different forms of UGC. One particular study called "Comments please: How the British news media are struggling with user-generated content," conducted by Alfred Hermida and Neil Thurman, researched various media organizations in the U.K. to classify the categories of UGC.
The eight main formats they found are the following:
1. Polls: Topical questions where readers are asked to make a multiple choice or binary response. This one's a personal favorite of mine because I love feeling that my opinion is valued and simultaneously seeing how much my thoughts conform with the general public's.
2. Messageboards: Areas that allow readers to debate a topic often initiated by another reason. These are usually reactively moderated and date back to 1999 with The Guardian.
3. Have your says: Here, journalists post topical questions and readers send in written replies. Unlike message boards, these are only open for a limited number of days. Here is an example by The Guardian, and here is another non-journalism example by Buzzfeed.
4. Comments on stories: Allows readers to submit their views on a story that they read.
5. Q&As: Interviews with journalists and/or invited guests that include questions scripted by readers.
6. Blogs: You are literally reading one right now.
7. Your media: Galleries of photographs, video, and other media submitted by readers and vetted by journalists. Here is an invitation to submit by The Guardian, and here is a compilation by the BBC.
8. Your story: Sections where readers are asked to send in stories that mater to them, which are then edited by journalists. Here is The Guardian's official page to do so, and here is the BBC's official Twitter for people to send in stories.
Chances are, you have seen at least a few of these before. In fact, I'd like to think you have by the time you read this sentence, because I did not include those helpful links to examples for nothing.
UGC covers a great variety of style and content, and the positive side to this is that it creates a pool of diverse thoughts. At the same time, UGC is far from 100% good. Yes, there is a pool of diverse thought, but this includes ideas and comments from people who really have no qualifications. I would like to think my journalism degree is going to have more value than the words of a Paul who lives in his basement and shares The Onion articles on Facebook thinking they are real.
The Issue
One of biggest issues studies have found regarding UGC in British journalism is that news organizations risk losing a sense of professionalism and superiority when they welcome UGC. This was one of the key findings in the aforementioned study by Hermida and Thurman, as well as another study entitled, "User-Generated Content and Journalistic Values" by Jane B. Singer and Ian Ashman.
Both studies explained how news organizations are supposed to serve as "traditional gatekeepers" and consider themselves separated from other user-based content platforms. Whereas places such as Youtube and MySpace (to clarify: this study was from 2009 when MySpace still was a thing, but for modern-day purposes you can substitute it with Vine or Tik Tok) are "channels for content from numerous and varied sources" with "little editorial control," "mainstream news production has been characterized as being the 'exercise of routine and highly regulated procedures in the task of selecting from already limited supplies of information." Simply put, news organizations have more integrity and a more important (for lack of a better word) reputation. Using UGC threatens their reputation and their factual content.
The study by Singer and Ashman included interviews with various journalists who described their interactions and issues with UGC. The issue of authenticity was a big problem many people found, and there was evidently a crucial ongoing role for “the expert journalist who can interrogate and understand and all of those sorts of things in a way that the citizen reporter just can’t.” The average person just does not have the qualifications to create journalistic content the same way a professional can. And if that's wrong, then I have wasted a lot of money in pursuit of my degree.
To ensure UGC enforces and does not inhibit accuracy, journalists must make sure they validate all aspects of the content to ensure it is true, timely, and unbiased.
The BBC
The BBC is a leading news organization in the UK and frequently makes use of user-generated content. When doing so, however, there are many guidelines that they follow to ensure they remain their integrity and accuracy.
On their official guidance note regarding user generated content, the BBC factors through many different topics before deciding whether or not they will use a piece of footage.
The company sifts through its UGC using the following filters:
1. User Safety: BBC reminds people that safety should never ever be compromise for the sake of acquiring footage that would help with news.
2. Keeping it Legal: Nobody should be breaking the law in order to capture footage of something. The example used in the guidebook is trespassing on private property.
3. Children: Extra safety procedures must be taken when considering content delivered by children.
4. Privacy: A picture of video that potentially breached someone's privacy or was clearly taken against their will likely will not be used, or steps will be taken to protect the subject's identity.
5. Consent: The BBC acknowledges that in the case of UGC, people being filmed may not realize their image is going to be televised on a major broadcast.
6. Newsgathering and breaking news: When gathering UGC and publishing material, questions regarding their contribution to the news gathering process must be considered.
7. Checking the facts: To preserve accuracy, the BBC calls for: "the accurate gathering of material using first hand sources wherever possible, checking and cross checking the facts, validating the authenticity of documentary evidence and digital material, corroborating claims and allegations made by contributors wherever possible."
If you ask me, these are all pretty reasonable filters, but I also realize it's a lot easier said than done. Earlier this year in my Digital Britain class, we were fortunate enough to hear from the company's Senior advisor in Editorial Policy, Matt Eltringham. We discussed the topic of user-generated content, and Matt showed us a video in Syria of a man being buried alive which had been submitted. After watching the video a few times, we broke down the discrepancies within the footage that gave it away as a piece of propaganda, rather than a real video worth of news. I hate admitting this on a website where I'm trying to make myself seem hirable, but I struggled to find the mistakes easily. Some of the key giveaways were the fact that the video ceased before the man was put in any real harm, and something about the actual location of the video did not make sense.
It made sense to me in hindsight, but I can see how the job is a lot more tough than it sounds. The BBC actually has an entire UGC hub, which is based in the newsroom at New Broadcasting House in London. This team is comprised of "journalists who are responsible for a lot of the user-generated and social media content that makes its way on to BBC News outlets across digital, radio, and TV." These are the people who go through thousands of examples of user-generated content and social media posts, and then decide which ones will make the cut.
The Guardian
The Guardian is another major well-respected journalism outlet in the U.K. and integrates many examples of UGC on its website.
In fact, The Guardian even released an entire platform for UGC named GuardianWitness in 2013, which allowed readers to submit photographs, video and text directly to Guardian journalists through either articles on the website or free apps on Apple and Android smartphones.
The point of the platform, as described by social and communities editor Joanna Geary, was to "further reinforce our recognition that journalism is now a two-way conversation and will open up our site as we never have before. Not only will this make it even easier for our readers to get involved in our journalism and form both local and global communities of joint interest, it will also provide our journalists with a fantastic new tool, providing them with insights and views that we perhaps don't yet have access to."
Geary's statements also proves true my previous statement about how UGC is reinventing the journalist-audience relationship, fostering a two-way relationship rather than a one-way. Unfortunately. GuardianWitness came to an end five years later, on September 30th, 2018. The decision to close it came with the recognition that the platform no longer served as "the way the vast majority of our readers choose to share their stories and collaborate with the Guardian. Many contribute views and experiences via community callouts, which range from breaking news to single issues and regular series."
When I first read that the platform closed, I was pretty frustrated because I felt that it sent the message that The Guardian stopped prioritizing UGC as much. (Truth be told, I was also frustrated because I had been banking on it to provide a lot of content in this blog post, but I'd like to think it's going fine anyways). However, the reason for the platform's end is actually the exact opposite; the company realized that there were better ways to encourage UGC, so they decided to focus its efforts elsewhere.
Now, users can contribute to The Guardian via the Community page, which includes many types of UGC that I described previously. You can tell the outlet how climate movements have affected you, or the situation of the European elections where you live, or you can send in photos that will be published, or you can choose questions to ask book experts.
Conclusion
At the end of the day, it would be nearly impossible to evade UGC completely as a news organization. While some places may do their best to reject their notion under the impression that it would compromise their integrity, major outlets such as the BBC and The Guardian prove how British journalism organizations are embracing the institution - while still filtering and regulating when needed.
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