The Future of UGC: How User-Generated Content is Reshaping Academic Research
1. Introduction to User-Generated Content (UGC)
The Future of UGC: How User-Generated Content is Reshaping Academic Research Broadly speaking, user-generated content (UGC) is defined as publicly available, original, created outside of professional routines, with an individual or group social identity, and published on publicly accessible digital platforms. Academic scholars recognize that a significant and growing proportion of UGC is created on digital platforms, enabling researchers to leverage it as data for analysis. They are increasingly resorting to UGC to explore a variety of aspects of their disciplines. UGC has triggered collaborative academic research and is transforming conventional approaches to fund grants and deliver academic courses.
Within the academic research community, pioneering groups are building UgC communities by exploring social media as a prominent UGC hub and fully utilizing the potential of UGC to create effective citizen science projects. Other researchers attempt to integrate UGC with traditional data collection methods to provide a more complete, comprehensive, and rich picture of the research focus. Several scholars advocate the use of UGC to engage students during classes, convert students from passive participants into active participants, and encourage students to become active creators of research-shaped content, a process known as research-based teaching. A growing number of scholars also call for a path where peer review resembles open public peer review, often recognized as a key pillar of the open access publishing platform.
2. Historical Context of UGC in Academia
The idea of User-Generated Content (UGC) is not new but has only recently gained significant attention, passing into its "hype" phase. The rise of digital platforms such as collaborative wiki projects, video and picture sharing websites, social bookmarking, microblogging, and social networks has made it more obvious for academics to consider using User-Generated Content in their methodology and literature. Over time, the amount of information voluntarily published by users has become extremely large and valuable for researchers. Embedded in the content, users add not only the content itself but also contextual metadata such as geographical information, feelings, sharing behavior, comments, or impressions. Meta discussions and UGC research groups have appeared throughout the academic community, as have several projects mainly financed by the European Union.
Anecdotally, students have indicated that the possibility to be part of the content creation in UGC projects makes them feel more engaged, facilitating active learning. Open Access publishing might also consider different workflows for article publishing, which incorporate UGC, because each manuscript would have a higher chance of finding the right audience through the networks and online communities of many people. UGC is also a promising idea for the Peer Review process because reviews from more people would allow a better assessment location for the papers, either because the spread of articles would be increased or because more reviewers from different research fields could be involved. In other words, User-Generated Content is reshaping the high-value function of Research, largely seen by all institutions active in research as one of the purist and most important projects.
3. The Rise of Digital Platforms for UGC
The widespread use of the Internet globally has fostered the growth of many well-known, large online communities that support the creation and distribution of vast amounts of User-Generated Content (UGC). Some of these communities focus on a specific object of content while others cover topics across multiple domains. Services such as Amazon, eBay, Etsy, and Tripadvisor utilize the reviews and ratings created by customers and users to help users choose where to purchase products or services from. Other product-specific communities include Noonswoon for matchmaking and ZAGAT for restaurant reviews. Communities like Shutterstock and iStock allow photographers to sell pictures. Wikipedia is the largest free encyclopedia, permitting anyone to add details or amend information, creating one of the largest and most widely used online knowledge bases.
Other widely used digital platforms include Google Earth and Google Maps, which are enriched with detailed and freely contributed geographic information created by millions of users; for example, in Wikimapia, users are allowed to describe a location of geographical interest or share their opinion about a place of interest. Many people contribute to the creation of micro blogs, for example, TripAdvisor or Twitter, through posts and comments on a wide range of topics. Social networking platforms such as Facebook and LinkedIn also allow members to engage with others through posts, comments, and sharing. Photos, videos, and personal stories of experiences and thoughts are widely shared through platforms like Snapchat, WhatsApp, Flickr, Instagram, and YouTube. Finally, Academia.edu and ResearchGate.net enable users to publish their papers or research, inviting comments from other users in the community.
4. Impact of UGC on Research Methodologies
The increasing availability and use of content provided by users presents new possibilities for research, not only in the data itself, but also in the way researchers select and collect it. Access to content generated by specific groups and targeted by study disciplines calls for new tools that can explore and utilise the data, support, facilitate and improve existing research methodologies, and foster new research horizons. User-generated content (UGC) methods actively engage academic community members so they can contribute directly to research projects, with the opportunity themselves to explore the data generated. When community members share content as part of a well-planned, well-supported study, they become equal partners in the investigation and exploration of that content.
5. UGC and Collaborative Research
The emergence of user-generated content (UGC) has encouraged collaborative and participatory research, redefining the scholarly community. Compared to traditional academic research, which often isolates researchers within individual disciplines, UGC supports the creation and sharing of knowledge across broader research fields. The availability of real-time data has fostered a collaborative academic environment allowing groups of scholars to incorporate multiple ideas and expert opinions into their studies. With the contribution of many individual authors, new ideas are blended with various perspectives to reach a combined agreement or consensus. Consequently, the process of creating new knowledge has become more collaborative and democratic.
Moreover, UGC heightened the ethical and legal obligations required for researchers engaged in collaborative and participatory studies. Research involving human participants must address privacy, informed consent, and protection of research data. The availability of large volumes of real-life data from multiple sources—such as pictures, videos, blogs, surveys, and questionnaires—facilitates more meaningful and efficient research. The intense engagement of participants in such studies deepens their understanding and stimulates thoughtful reflection about the research topic. Active involvement also empowers participants by making their voices visible and creates a sense of social belonging within the study group. However, concerns about data quality, including the lack of formal training among contributors and inherent biases, remain significant challenges in effectively utilizing UGC.
6. Ethical Considerations in UGC Research
Ethical considerations are paramount when academic research relies on UGC. Researchers must be mindful of data origin and the conditions in which it was created, especially sensitive data sourced from vulnerable or unaware individuals. Breaches of confidentiality, including unintentional disclosure of user identity, must be scrupulously avoided. Ensuring the validity of results through representative and sufficiently large samples, as well as guarding against personal biases, further safeguards ethical standards.
Given the ethical risks associated with UGC research, obtaining approval from formal ethical committees prior to data collection is advisable. Despite much UGC being publicly accessible online, treating such information as sensitive and acting accordingly aligns with protective principles. A significant challenge for early-career researchers involves adapting to these ethical demands when traditional academic training rarely addresses the unique needs of UGC.
7. Data Quality and Reliability of UGC
User-generated data also poses substantial problems in terms of data quality and reliability. Analysis of UGC becomes more challenging, and there is a risk of confidentiality for customers and companies, as users often do not realize that their data might be marketed. Commercial organizations have often been blamed for exploiting UGC, especially when the user contributed their content with no expectation of it being monetized, and for mining people’s data to target them with advertisements. Other issues relate to the inequalities of access to the digital world, which in turn affect the quality and reliability of UGC. In addition, the analysis of UGC sources such as Facebook has shown a richness of different types of biases present, such as population bias, self-selection bias, behavioural bias, content bias, and more.
However, concerns about bias apply also to traditional offline data collection. Studies show opinion polls can suffer from methodological issues such as non-response and interviewer biases. Adventurers and explorers have traditionally written about their own experiences on social media, and UGC might help identify areas most frequently visited or in danger of being "lovemarked."
8. Case Studies: Successful UGC Projects
This section illustrates UGC’s growing prominence in research and its ability to create opportunities for new research topics and perspectives. The volume of UGC allows researchers to study individuals at various levels, enabling them to follow discussions as they unfold, thereby gaining better insights into public opinion formation. The digital era has witnessed an unprecedented rise of digital platforms that enable individuals to create and distribute opinions, feelings, comments, and reviews anytime and virtually anywhere. Consequently, discussions encompass nearly all aspects of everyday life, enriching the development of diverse research fields.
Digital tools have become integral to the research cycle, providing new opportunities for data gathering, analysis, and visualisation. Numerous projects rely on digital methods for various research needs; for example, activities in digital humanities depend heavily on the interpretative analysis of large cultural data sets. Their sensitivity to context and fragmentary nature qualifies them more for being considered within a specific technological framework rather than a disciplinary one. Despite the clear benefits in terms of data volume and access, research within digital communities is orientated towards understanding the impact of digital technology rather than focusing on specific disciplines such as business, health, or social psychology in isolation. The potential stimulus for research lies in the hybridisation of digital media with business, social, political, and cultural life.
9. The Role of Social Media in UGC
Social Media is the Main Source of a Large Share of UGC Nowadays, social media platforms serve as the main source of a large share of User Generated Content. According to the Social Media Mining for Health Research and Applications (SMM4H) shared-task at ACL 2018, information about health consumer experiences, such as adverse drug reactions and medication intake, is found at large scale on social media. Projects like Cosmopolitan magazine’s #MyBirthStory, where real people share personal stories, photos, and videos from their childbirth experience, exemplify this trend. Public health researchers at Queen Mary University of London used birth stories from Twitter to explore how new mothers communicate mental health concerns during and after pregnancy.
Social Media Provides Large Volumes of Free, Easily Accessible Data Social media offers a large volume of free and easily accessible data related to human behavior. Tracking flu disease was one of the first applications for social media analysis, and currently, COVID-19 surveillance is a popular application in this domain. The IBM Research AI Explainability 360 Toolkit explores Twitter data to detect sarcasm and mental disorders such as depression or post-traumatic stress disorder in tweets. Recent shared-task evaluations include social media mining for customer interaction analysis, building sets of automatically generated sticky notes, and analyzing taxis–customers interactions.
10. UGC in Different Academic Disciplines
The Future of UGC: How User-Generated Content is Reshaping Academic Research
The widespread use of Web 2.0 services such as social media platforms, Wikipedia and YouTube, which arise from the spirit of interactivity, generates large volumes of content produced by users rather than media professionals. This type of content is known by the generic term of user-generated content (UGC). Academic research cannot overlook the contributions of UGC, as it helps to partially compensate for the increasing detachment of research from everyday life and people. Although research is enrooting the knowledge produced in the laboratory with reality more closely, it is still not able to respond to a major part of the demands and concerns of society. It is true that users need to develop their own criteria to manage the information overload associated with the use of these social platforms. However, the management of the content overload is an essential topic that concerns researchers. The study of the roots of information behaviour usually ignores the analysis of information use and retrieval in social environments.
The contents published by users in digital environments are currently employed to conduct academic research. Nevertheless, not all researchers use the different types of content published by users, since these contents do not always provide the guidelines or recommendations required by all research studies. There are investigations that value the use of content published by users to successfully carry out any study and others that consider them an obstacle to achieving their goals. There are topics or circumstances that are not covered by the information contained in UGC because, sometimes, the information published by users does not follow the editorial policy of the social networks or the crowdsourcing sites. The use of UGC acarposes all kinds of problems, such as privacy, copyrights and reliability, which make the academic community reluctant to use content generated by users. It is currently possible to find academic studies from several disciplines that make use of user-generated content to carry out meaningful research.
11. Challenges Faced by Researchers Using UGC
User-Generated Content (UGC) indeed provides an invaluable source of research data that would otherwise be unavailable, and it can be used to enrich and extend traditional research methods. However, despite these benefits, it can also present researchers with some potentially challenging issues. Privacy concerns are central, especially since UGC is often contributed unwittingly or inadvertently. As McGranahan and Metcalf observed in relation to location data, despite recent efforts at de-identification for privacy protection, there are risks of harm or victimization and vulnerability remain common. The use of location data (as with other forms of UGC) presents a range of ethical concerns that are difficult to address through either ethical principles or guidelines, given the lack of control exercised by data subjects over its collection and uses.
Research using UGC therefore poses some challenges. Firstly, it is important for users to understand just how the content they submit might be used. Secondly, it is vital for researchers to handle all such content appropriately. Particular consideration should be given to any messages contributed that suggest possible mental health or well-being concerns that might require intervention or even immediate help. Thirdly, attention should be paid – as with all research and data analysis – to potential biases. In special cases such as the COVID-19 pandemic, this may include tampering as well as bias. Information warfare is a powerful tool that the initiators of a bidirectional hybrid war against Russia use to weaken the country's coherence and the functioning of individual segments of the state. They combine all the possibilities of the cultural, ideological, psychological, and social dimensions of the information environment to influence public opinion, exacerbate internal tensions, and erode the social and moral foundations of the country. The challenges of using the UGC approach are therefore both generic and specific.
12. Future Trends in UGC and Academic Research
The notion that user-generated content (UGC) represents merely the sociological and marketing interests of digital enthusiasts is now invalid. The ability of millions of global people to create, share, and comment on research has significant implications for are- as far removed from social media and the marketing world as academic research. Publics can collaborate with researchers at all stages of investigation.
Studies routinely make use of digital content created by members of the public, often on a scale of many thousands. Public engagement is recognized by universities as a legitimate strand within their research activities, and is evidenced through public contributions to data creation. How- ever, despite early advances, understanding within some fields remains limited. The initial hype of public interest having been satisfied, the challenges—the dangers and the pitfalls—need to be addressed. The following uses examples from life sciences but risks, benefits, and opportunities are valid for any of the academic domains.
13. Integrating UGC into Traditional Research Frameworks
User-generated content (UGC) is content – textual posts, videos, images or audio files – created by users of an online system or service, often made available via social media websites. UGC has great potential for use in academic research for three main reasons: it is up-to-date and immediate, it provides a personal angle, and it provides a large-scale collective dataset. Traditionally, research involving the public or with public subjects was viewed as restricted in scope and of limited use. Today’s public, equipped with easy to use tools that facilitate their content creation and sharing, are an important source of information and a valid partner in research. UGC enables the collective expansion of knowledge, through better interaction between peers and specialists. It has great potential in stimulating and sustaining active and motivated student participation.
Research is emerging that focuses on different applications and approaches to using UGC at the research stage, such as other uses for information generated by the public or the use of social media. UGC creates additional challenges for the researcher, such as the need to evaluate risks for both the research subjects and for the conducting of the research itself. A great deal of research has been done in analysing the quality of the data, the development of appropriate search and analytical tools, and performance optimisation for data processing within the fields of computer science and information management. Other aspects that need to be considered are the protection of infrastructures and the safeguarding of privacy with respect to the data owners.
14. The Influence of UGC on Peer Review Processes
The scholarly publication cycle is being transformed by changes to peer review processes, which rely heavily on user-generated content (UGC). This article discusses how UGC, which underpins many approaches to assessing the quality of research output, influences these processes, and the emerging challenges posed by its utilization. It also examines areas such as student engagement, new research opportunities created by UGC, and the alterations in funding scopes that create new entry points.
Cited multiple times in academic papers, it is fair to assume that, following a rigorous peer review process, the content is of reasonable quality and interest to others in the academic community. The exponential growth in peer-reviewed journals, and the number of research papers published by them, has cellularized individual papers. As research becomes more fragmented, there are fewer potential readers who have the background to understand the derived knowledge and concepts. These new cells of research are heavily reliant on citation, also generated by other scholarly users, to demonstrate their importance in the context of other published work.
15. Engaging Students through UGC
Student engagement through user-generated content (UGC) already involves students in active learning and the creation of publicly-shared content. For instance, student bloggers and student-generated podcasts engage their peers, faculty, and the local community on academic issues, using innovative approaches for public argumentation. University of Mary Washington’s Digital History Bloggers transform their course papers into engaging blog posts, offering historical context for contemporary issues with direct engagement via comments from Facebook and Twitter followers.
Another example is the podcast series Humanities Moments launched by the National Endowment for the Humanities as ongoing campaigning on the role of Arts and Humanities. Professor Bernadette Hince and her applied linguistics students contributed to the series with a Quick Guide to Australian Slang, an audio podcast now on the Humanities Moments website. This project engages not only the student podcasters, but also the research skills and transdisciplinary expertise of their lecturer. A further dimension to public dissemination of research through UGC stems from the close links developing between academia and the cultural heritage sector, with student-generated content forming an important part of these sectoral partnerships.
16. UGC and Open Access Publishing
In recent years numerous areas of the academic profession have been transformed. Many scholars now rely on user-generated content (UGC)—travel blogs, restaurant reviews, social media postings—to uncover ideas for their research. A wealth of information is now publicly available because new technologies have made it possible for anyone to produce content and make it instantly accessible to a large audience. Academic journals have also changed; anyone is now able to publish their discoveries online and make it publicly available without any cost. Social networking sites have made it easier for scholars to instantly share their findings with others.
Open access is quickly becoming one of the preferred dissemination channels in scholarly publishing. It offers researchers the advantage of amplifying the visibility of their work and having immediate access to an enhanced readership. The barriers to accessing academic publications are removed, as open access content is free at the point of use and available to all. The importance of these factors is demonstrated by the accelerating growth of open access publishing, with estimates pointing to a share of about 50% of published articles by 2022.
17. Technological Innovations Supporting UGC
Technological innovations aid academics in gathering large quantities of quality data. They help organize and analyze data points to arrive at meaningful conclusions. The development of database platforms allows collaboration between researchers on a wider scale, such that more people can contribute to and validate academic work. Crowdsourcing platforms allow members of the public to play a direct role in in academic work, whether it is by collecting data or analyzing questions. Data validation algorithms provide automatic methods and checks to validate incoming data against set criteria.
Smartphones enable geographically distributed data collection while GPS tagging of posts allows for categorization by location. Databases provide efficient ways to store large amounts of user-generated content while platforms such as GitHub allow crowdsourced collaboration in data analysis. The field of real-time geological earthquake research benefits from the enabling technology of mobile phones. Together with smartphone technology, crowdsourcing brings geographical and temporal flexibility into research. Location-based tagging enhances classification of the collected data, improving visualization and analysis.
18. The Global Perspective on UGC in Research
The global perspective on user-generated content (UGC) in academic research reveals a landscape influenced by geographic, cultural, and discipline-specific characteristics. Evidence suggests that within the humanities, arts, and social sciences (HASS), particular areas demonstrate a greater propensity towards shaping questions and fields of study as compared to their counterparts in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). With the rapid evolution of technologies and the global expansion of participation in Web 2.0 and social media, a corresponding growth in active involvement in UGC creation is anticipated.
However, geographical distribution indicates that Northern Europe, North America, Japan, and Australia contribute disproportionately to UGC generation. Contributors from these regions generally exhibit higher education levels and younger demographic profiles. Such trends suggest that, while UGC possesses the inherent potential to enable global collaboration and offer a wider representational lens in research, it remains susceptible to the exclusion of certain groups. Addressing these disparities in participation is critical to realizing UGC's full capacity in academic inquiry.
19. User Privacy and Data Protection in UGC
User-generated content research is undoubtedly exciting and filled with possibilities. However, because the information originates from real people, it is important to recognise that input from UGC research is vulnerable to privacy invasion. By submitting contributions, people may unintentionally reveal private information. For example, in a hypothetical crowdsourcing initiative, people may submit photos of their homes or workplaces to demonstrate the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. Often undetected, these photos may contain private information, such as a photo of the buildings aside, a person’s house number or even their licence plate.
Clearly, the privacy works need to be proactively planned and executed in order to ensure the proper protection of the contributors. Researchers should encourage people to use privacy protection tools during their contribution. Further, the detected privacy sensitive information should also be automatically removed. Privacy can be also protected by choosing an adequate licence for the project. In summary, whenever UGC is employed in a research endeavour, privacy should always be taken into consideration.
20. Building a UGC Community in Academia
Building a community of researchers interested in user-generated content (UGC) is now a top priority. Encouraging students and scholars globally to address the associated methodological, ethical, and quality issues is crucial; together, they can help shape the future of academia, which will revolve around a UGC-driven world. Offering advice and support is one part, but connecting the wider community through national or international networks, conferences, workshops, and journal special issues is even better. Some good examples already exist: the Doctoral Summer School at QUT is organized annually for PhD candidates conducting research on Web 2.0; the EGOS Conference on Organizing for Collaborations and Community—which focuses on social communities, their roles, and implications—is held every summer; and the North America Research Workshop on Social Media is specifically dedicated to UGC research.
Institutional support is also vital for nurturing excellence in UGC studies. In the UK, funding bodies increasingly recognize that the future of academic research depends on understanding the relationship between social media and society and are willing to support scholars who focus on these domains. As a result, a new generation of UGC researchers will soon emerge, poised to develop better UGC guidelines and to capitalize on social media visibility by sharing their findings with the wider academic community.
21. Funding Opportunities for UGC Research
A most common misperception is that UGC type studies do not follow the traditional publication avenue so it is perhaps of lower value. This is simply not true, user-generated content is now part of all research. Indeed UGC research that is conducted according to the usual rigorous academic standards is fully recognised and does qualify for Research Excellence Framework (REF) funding. By its nature, UGC research can be truly multidisciplinary in its approach and is consequently considered by many funders. It is worth mentioning that one of the driving factors may be the mantra that research should be “closer to the market.” Using UGC in research that can embrace this approach, especially in the social sciences, can open up new funding opportunities within the UGC arena.
Building a community of researchers around UGC within and across institutions can help with the exposure and acceptance of such submissions. It is highly likely that other researchers are producing the same kind of output but may feel isolated in doing so. Furthermore, many colleagues may in fact be reviewing similar research but are unaware of the convergence. By coming together in a suitable manner, the community can not only further establish UGC research, but can also develop a database of suitable funding sources. Thus colleagues who are contemplating using UGC but are slightly sceptical about the anticipated value of funding sources may see the advantage in doing so.
22. The Role of Academic Institutions in Promoting UGC
Academic institutions have an important role in promoting the use of user-generated content for academic research. Although much of the content on the Web is produced by regular individuals, typically not considered domain experts, they often possess expertise in a particular area, whether through direct or indirect experience. They may also have access to data not widely available.
By actively encouraging students and staff to create content that can be used in research, institutions effectively institutionalize these efforts. This approach fosters a community spirit centered around user-generated content and makes individuals aware of potential funding sources related to this type of research.
23. Measuring the Impact of UGC on Research Outcomes
The wealth of sources available can make it difficult to evaluate the quality of UGC. Distilling it for practical use is challenging. Its abundance also leads to information overload. Consequently, the question arises: how can the impact of UGC on academic research be identified and measured? Measuring this impact is relevant; some researchers have investigated the quality of UGC with respect to its potential use in research or to specific UGC research projects to gain insights into best practices and other key considerations such as privacy.
Assessing UGC quality can be classified as an analysis of crowd or group behavior and their output. In much the same way that accuracy and reliability are important dimensions for the quality assessment of traditional research, crowdsourcing-related UGC requires evaluation for completeness, accuracy, and reliability. The truthfulness of the information and its source is important because incorrect information might distort the findings of a research project and pollute its output. Consequently, one of the key elements for future research in this respect is the systematic evaluation and validation of UGC project data to build a coherent understanding of potential influence and help define associated best practices.
24. Comparative Analysis of UGC vs. Traditional Research
Comparative analysis of academic data collected online in the form of UGC offers a timely contribution to the discourse on UGC’s role in academic research. It addresses fundamental aspects such as dataset size, geographical coverage, and cost, revealing specific strengths and weaknesses. Understanding these factors informs current discourse on the quality and impact of UGC and supports reflection on the future role of these datasets in the academic community.
UGC is a powerful new source of data, which complements — but does not replace — more traditional data sources. UGC can also make a positive contribution back to the users themselves and broader society. Perhaps most exciting is UGC’s potential to energize: attracting a wider geographic and demographic audience to participate in the academic process, thereby expanding society’s capacity to understand and protect itself. Nevertheless, a range of challenges relates to the need to maintain users’ engagement and to deal with the inherent uncertainty and biases that characterize UGC.
25. Preparing for a UGC-Driven Future in Academia
The future of user-generated content (UGC) in academic research is one of boundless opportunity intertwined with boundless challenge. As technological advancements perpetually enhance, support, and allow such content, academic institutions are well advised to heed the changing tide by adjusting their policies, resources, and infrastructure. The greatest resistance is likely to come from scholars themselves, who must thoughtfully contemplate the associated possibilities and risks.
The act of compiling data from free-text public forums in the long tail of Big Data offers an appealing approach to social science research. At the same time, the more knowledge-seeking aspects of such inquiry call for analysis of the human knowledge elicitation that occurs within a given forum or set of forums. The historical approach to such research has been qualitative; it might be time to combine approaches with methods derived from other disciplines, such as data mining and machine learning.
26. Recommendations for Researchers Embracing UGC
Even with the risks and challenges posed by UGC, it is worth remembering the potential of this material for innovating current knowledge generation. The interest and dedication of users that produce the material enable the study of knowledge through the analysis of the sources, with added benefits of representing real needs and interests—something uncommon in general-source-written knowledge. Researchers willing to work with UGC should be aware of risks that make the quality of these materials suffer, especially its superficial analysis by media and organizations. Experts should consider the quality and context of these materials, and when possible, adjust for existing biases.
There are some guidelines for researchers wishing to incorporate UGC into their own activity. Authors should bear in mind the ethical concerns that the use of this type of data usually involves. They should emphasize data quality and clear description to allow other researchers to reproduce the study. These can be achieved by combining data from different sources and applying appropriate data-processing techniques. Authors should seek funding opportunities for UGC-related projects and anticipate public influence. Researchers should investigate UGC topics and methodologies, as awareness is growing and tools to manage these data sources keep developing. Institutions can contribute to the creation of a UGC community and promote the use of these materials.
27. Conclusion
Users of the World, Uniting! The Challenges and Opportunities of User-Generated Content for Academic Research, London School of Economics and Political Science. At the very least, such corpora offer fascinating insights, such as, in studies of people’s response to floods, an analysis of UGC messages. It is reported that ‘‘ ‘Flood’ quickly becomes of great topical interest, but area-specific queries, such as ‘flood South Yorkshire,’ come to dominate as the flood approaches a particular town, city or region.’’ Recent years have marked an important turning point, as academics have entered a new phase, one in which UGC are not simply an object of interest, but form an integral part of the research process itself. An example, in the humanities, is the launch of a website inviting visitors to submit their own stories and memories of the Second World War; the growing use of crowdsourcing in the digital humanities is highlighted in a discussion of the Library of Congress’s Civil War Diaries and Letters Project. The case for institutional support for research projects involving content created by the users of social media is emphasised in a call for an ‘‘umbrella architecture,’’ founded on support, recognition and reward. The inquirer argued that, in the era of UGC, ‘‘the role of The Guardian is to provide a hub, not just a public opinion leader.’»
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