The production of content by the general public rather than by paid professionals and experts in the field. Also called "peer production" and "crowdsourcing" and available on the Web via blogs, wikis and social media, user-generated content includes the daily news, encyclopedias, movie and product reviews, as well as articles and postings on any subject, all of which have been traditionally written by editors, journalists and academics. See
free economy.
The Amateur Rules!
As brought out in Andrew Keen's "The Cult of the Amateur," when everyday users are allowed to report the news anonymously and are not held accountable for anything they say, it becomes increasingly difficult to tell fact from fiction. Professional journalists and editors, even those with immense fame, can be criticized and even fired for false reporting. However, the contributing user who can write anything is never held responsible. In addition, anyone can post something online, leading to an unprecedented information overload in today's world. See
Section 230,
social media,
blog,
wiki,
Wikipedia,
Web 2.0,
citizen journalism,
YouTube and
crowdsourcing.