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Abstract
This paper explores two published articles regarding the research of user generated
content (UGC) website and also two information based articles to supplement the research. The
first article studied how to make effective communities for higher educational learning purposes.
The second article addresses the motivational behavior of participants sharing to Wikipedia
which gives insights to possible structures of other UGC websites. The two informational articles
focus on legality precautions and moderation of the content posted by a website users. The
findings of this paper indicate that for a UGC community to have quality content, have active
users and a strong community there must be an organizational design that gives its users
incentives to share, collaborate and discuss. There must also be a familiarity with the intended
audience’s motivational behavior when sharing knowledgeable content for the purpose of design
and structure, as well as maintaining the evolving characteristics of the audience. A UGC
website can thrive with quality content if they know how to incite their users as well as
structuring their website to nurture the user’s motivation to contribute and continually do so.
Also given the nature of UGC there must be legal precautions taken to protect the website and its
users of copyright infringement and other illegal activity. There are three methods of moderation
for UGC: pre-moderation, post-moderation and reactive moderation. Moderation is key for UGC
website so that there is always quality content, focus driven content and integrity among the site
and its users.
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User Generated Content:
Strategies for an Effective Web Community
The World Wide Web (WWW) at first was “read-only” and did not allow its users to
interact and communicate with one another. After a second phase of revamping the WWW’s
architecture and application development, commonly known as the Web 2.0, users and
consumers of the internet could now share, interact, meet, collaborate, and use social software
(Moens, Li, & Chua, 2014). The participation of the WWW drastically increased because users
were now able to “read and write” on the web which allows users to not only connect with the
website itself but also with other users as well. The data that is posted by users and seen publicly
or in select groups on the WWW is considered to be user generated content or UGC. Also, if “
there is some creative effort in putting together the work or adapting existing works in order to
create a new one, which is done by one person or as a collaborative effort” (Moens, 2014) then it
is considered to be UGC. The distinction must be made, however, between professionally
generated content and user generated content. Professionally generated content is content that is
authored and published with no possibility for interaction or change. This type of content is “read
only” and is meant to communicate a message directly at it audience versus communicating with
its audience. Professional generated content will always be important for media and the
publishing of materials but it cannot progress public communication like that of user generated
content. With the advancement of the internet and the ever progressing technology of the
mediums or devices that can access the internet, users are able to post content publicly from
almost anywhere and anytime. This allows for real time communication between users with text,
pictures and videos. Moreover, UGC can document events as they are happening and this allows
users to know and know and see these events. UGC allows for real time news and discussion of
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said news with other users who can either add to the post that was shared or inquiry for more
information.
With that being said the goal is to identify the possible strategies to plan, create, and
maintain an active UGC community whilst holding onto its main goals and continuing to evolve
with its user’s wants and needs. As UGC relies solely on its users for information and discussion
it is required to know structural strategies and organizations that incite users to continually share,
discuss, and collaborate. Moreover, knowing the audience and their motivational behavior to
share will only further the knowledge required to create a goal oriented UGC website. If the site
is to remain goal oriented with quality posts and discussions there most also be some form of
moderation. This means that if users are sharing content or discussing inappropriately and not
along the lines of the goal of the website it must be removed or the user may be banned. Finally,
there must be precautions taken by any UGC website to remove itself from the possible
ramifications of the law. Moderation has its part in this but initially a site must protect itself with
terms and conditions, privacy policies, and even attracting users that will follow the laws.
Literature Review
In C. Brocke, J. Brocke, Walker, and Whites (2010) article about making effective UGC
communities in higher education, it was found that in the organizational aspect of a UGC’s
design, the most important thing for a strong community is to set incentives. The research
gathered from those learning on eGroups yielded six incentives that make a UGC community
work: high valences, positive expectations, adequate capacities, supportive role perceptions, fair
and transparent evaluation, and meaningful rewards. C. Brocke et al. (2010) found that
“exchanging, constructing, sharing, critiquing, and interpreting knowledge through interaction”
for the purpose of real life skills led to high valences. Another important incentive for UGC
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communities is to have positive expectations, especially early on. “Positive expectations are a
critical incentive to support initial and ongoing engagement (C. Brocke et al., 2010)” in UGC
communities. There must be positive expectations for the host and its administrators, its
interface, and overall presentation. There must also be positive expectation for its users to
contribute, user to user interaction and user feedback. The next key incentive is that of adequate
capacities which refers to the participants or users having a sense of self-efficacy within the
community. This means that each participant has to feel that was they contribute and discuss is
effective to both them and the community. Participants must also generally know the role that
they have in a UGC community. That is, there must be supportive role perceptions that
encourage activity in the community. C. Brocke et al. (2010) says that “support, feedback and a
structure” will guide the process. This leads into the next incentive which is fair and transparent
evaluation. Participants need to have the “incentive to be aware of what and how they were
contributing, how it was seen by others and that the process of community-building was a critical
part of the assessment (C. Brocke et al., 2010). This means that there must be some sort grading
or evaluation system, fair and transparent, that gauges individual and community involvement.
The final incentive for participants of a UGC community is that of meaningful rewards. There
must be some kind of meaningful reward for participants to contribute and be active in the
community. C. Brocke et al., (2010) lists three possible rewards:
Exposure to diverse and complex situations: encountering divers views,
establishing common ground, stimulus for ideas and reflection
Development of key competencies: negotiation of meaning, engaging with
content and other participants, opportunities to work within and contribute to a
community of inquiry by sharing learning and knowledge
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Learning to see oneself in new ways: developing an online identity, building
productive working relationships with others, acting as mutual experts and
accessing new knowledge collaboratively.
From an organizational standpoint, C. Brocke et al. (2010) comes to the conclusion that for a
UGC community to work and be strong there must be clear incentives for its user or participants
and each of the six incentives listed above must be utilized.
In Lai and Yang’s (2010) article they studied the motivations of Wikipedia content
contributors and the analytical results yielded that the internal self-concept motivation was the
leading motivation for sharing knowledgeable content. “The aim of this study was to evaluate the
effects of both conventional and self concept-based motivation on individual willingness to share
knowledge in Wikipedia” (Lai & Yang, 2010). The aim of this study was to find empirical
evidence of Wikipedia participants and what their motivations were by giving an online
questionnaire survey and analyzing the results. The four hypotheses used to understand the
motivation of knowledge sharing behavior are: intrinsic motivation, extrinsic motivation,
external self-concept, and internal self-concept. Using structural equation modeling (SEM) the
results were 0.563 internal self-concept, 0.123 external self-concept, 0.081 extrinsic motivation
and -0.065 intrinsic motivation. The higher the SEM score is the more positive relationship that
motivation has with knowledge sharing behavior. Lai and Yang (2010) conclude that only the
hypothesis of internal self-concept is supported because it shows the only really positive
association with sharing behavior on Wikipedia. “Individuals gain confidence in their
capabilities by sharing knowledge in Wikipedia, as the concept of self-efficacy supports” (Lai &
Yang, 2010). Intrinsic motivation was not supported because participants had high intrinsic
motivations and the differences in motivation levels did not directly correlate with the amount of
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information shared. Extrinsic motivation was also not supported because there is little physical or
outside reward via the community or Wikipedia for the amount and quality of information
shared. Finally, external self-concept motivation showed very little support in positive
association with knowledge sharing behavior. Lai & Yang (2010) come to this conclusion based
on the fact that Wikipedia participants do not have strong relationships with reference groups
because personal identities are often kept private and there is little to know communication or
feedback from other participants in the Wikipedia community.
The article by Brown, Butzer, & Latham (2008) suggest the possible legal ramifications
of a UGC site and they provide general tips or guidelines for UGC service providers so they
abstain from legal problems. The possible legal problems UGC service providers may face
include but are not limited to: illegal activity, copyright infringement, defamation of character,
and violations of rights and privacy (Brown et al., 2008). The practical tips offered are:
1. Do everything possible to ensure that your business falls under the [section]
512(c) safe harbor provision.
2. Rather than relying on the safe harbor, a safer approach may be to seek licenses
and partnerships from content owners.
3. Use click-wrap agreements rather than terms and conditions. (Meaning users must
first read and then approve terms and conditions before contributing)
4. Think carefully about the contents of the click-wrap agreements to ensure that all
appropriate representations, warranties, and indemnities from submitting users are
given.
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5. To strengthen the argument that your business is not receiving a “direct financial
benefit” from infringing material, consider removing ads from areas of your
website where UGC is posted.
Brown et al. (2008)
These general tips and guidelines mainly focus on copyright infringements but not defamation of
character or other illegal activities. BBC Editorial Guidelines (2014) offer advice in which ways
UGC may be moderated. “Successful online communities operate by consent and encourage a
genuine sense of ownership among their users…Every online space where user generated content
is published must have someone editorially responsible for that content and should have a host to
provide a visible and active presence and a moderator who can remove illegal or inappropriate
content (BBC, 2014). UGC can be moderated in three ways with the first being that of pre-
moderations. Pre-moderation is the moderation of content before it is posted or published on the
site. This method can lead to very strong and quality content with little legal worry but it can also
take too much time depending on the websites goal. Post-moderation is the process of
moderating the content after it has been posted by its users. This is ideal for quick posting and
for websites that encourage debate and discussion. The last moderation process is that of reactive
moderation in which the users of the website alert moderators of questionable content. BBC
(2014) suggest this method is more suitable for a mature audience rather than a site that attracts
children.
Discussion
C. Brocke et al.’s (2010) research concluded that the most important aspect of a UGC
learning website would be in its organizational design and more specifically its incentives. The
limitations of this study are that it only focuses on a UGC site that is geared towards high
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education learning and as a result the only research that was done focused on the demographic of
people in higher education. Although a very specific focus on UGC the results can certainly be
applied to all types of UGC for a strong and active site. One positive thing that is a result of
focusing on higher education and learning is that the findings revolve around knowledge and
intellectual discussion and collaboration. The focus to provide a UGC site where its users are
knowledgeable and have progressive discussions would closely fall in line with the research of a
UGC site focused on learning. Also the main objective of this was to find ways in which a
successful UGC learning community would thrive and in doing so came up with a holistic
approach on how to organize its incentives. This is vastly important in creating and maintaining
an active community on a UGC website. Therefore this research is valid in the purpose of
having a working, active and knowledge based UGC website.
Lai and Yang’s (2010) research concluded that the internal self-concept motivation had
the highest correlation with sharing knowledgeable content on Wikipedia. The focus of this
research was to find out what motivated people to post on a shared knowledge based website, i.e.
Wikipedia. The importance of this research not only yielding motivational patterns of
Wikipedia’s participants but it also has the potential to give an audience demographic depending
on what a purposed UGC site might want. For example a UGC site might want its users to be
more motivated by interaction and discussion so they can gear their website this way and focus
on the people will to take the time to discuss with other users online. This type of website would
want people that probably spend more time on the internet than others. The limitations of this
study are that it only focuses and researches Wikipedia participants and it cannot account for all
its participants given the study size. Also as Wikipedia is only a content sharing UGC site the
results do not account for the motivations of the people that post on social media sites. This study
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does, however, give insight into the different kinds of motivations that participants have been
posting content. With this information it can be deduced that UGC sites can have all the aspects
that encourage each type of motivation therefore making this a valid study for the purpose of this
work. Knowing what motivations it takes for user to continually and actively post content is vital
to any UGC site.
Both Brown et al.’s (2008) and BBC’s (2014) articles were used for their informational
purpose rather than their research. Brown et al.’s (2008) article details possible legal
ramifications of a UGC website which is immensely important when planning, creating and
maintaining such a site. BBC’s (2014) article details the need for moderation and what type of
moderation methods there are for a UGC website. This is also completely necessary for any
UGC website so that it maintains legality, focus, and integrity.
Conclusion
In order for there to be quality content, active users, and a strong community within a
UGC website there must be structure, organization, incentives, opportunities for motivation,
legal precautions and at least one method of moderation. Within the organizational design of a
UGC website there must be incentives for its users to continually be active in both quality posts,
discussions and collaborations. These incentives include: high valences, positive expectations,
adequate capacities, supportive role perceptions, fair and transparent evaluation, and meaningful
rewards. By following the role that each incentive provides for the users of UGC one would be
able to construct and maintain a website for a specific purpose and audience. Furthermore, the
evidence provided about what kinds of motivation users have when sharing knowledgeable
content would also would allow for one to construct a UGC website to fit its goals and intended
audience. Knowing the motivational behavior of participants when sharing is necessary to
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knowing your audience at first when creating the website but also it allows for a website to
evolve and change with its users to insure a strong and active community. The incentives based
on organization in design and the motivational behavior of an intended audience are both
essential for a UGC community to thrive but there must also be precautions taken for the
possibility of legal ramifications and some method of moderating to insure goal oriented sharing.
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References
Brown, J. T., Butzer, C. C., & Latham, R. P. (2008, May). Legal implications of
User-Generated Content: YouTube, MySpace, Facebook. Intellectual Property &
Technology Law Journal, 20(5), 1+.
Editorial Guidelines in Full: Interacting with Our Audiences. (2014, October 16).
Flanagen, C. (2013, May 23). So Much UGC, So Little Time: Options for Moderating
User-Generated Content.
vom Brocke, C., vom Brocke, J., Walker, U., White, C. (2010). Making User-Generated Content
Communities Work in Higher Education the Importance of Setting Incentives. (pp. 149-
166). Berlin, Heidelberg.
Yang, H., & Lai, C. (2010). Motivations of Wikipedia Content Contributors. Computers in
Human Behavior, 26(6), 1377-1383.
