”Brugergenereret indhold i de etablerede medier”: - en undersøgelse af omfanget af brugergenereret indhold i de danske medier og en analyse af barriererne for brugerne.

English abstract

This thesis examines to what extent UGC (User Generated Content) has found its way into established or mainstream media.
When blogs and other easily accessibly ways of publishing on the Internet first emerged, expectations were high that content from ordinary citizens - users - would be a supplement to mainstream media, and perhaps even eventually making them redundant.
These expectations seemed equally based on a wish to promote participatory democracy, and on criticism of mainstream media for being elitist and not listening to ordinary citizens.

The findings of this thesis show that when it comes to its primary focus, political and societal issues, there is little evidence of users or UGC having much impact on mainstream media today.
The established media still dominate the news flow, just as mainstream media remain most Danes’ preferred choice for news updating, even when it takes place online.

The established media have in fact embraced blogs, but only as a separate discussion forum, and most media have professionalised their blogs by only allowing big names/commentators to blog. Their blogs are usually open for comment, which the media, however, spend little time or effort editing or modifying.
Editors of Danish national media estimate that blogs, comments and other forms of user contributions, including tips to the editorial office, result in some 10 news stories a week. Contrasted with the approx. 1.400 items of news produced a week, it seems safe to conclude that UGC has very limited impact on news production.

Attempting to explain why this is the case, it seems that much of the rhetoric surrounding UGC is based on a stereotypical perception of how the media as well as journalists work. The frequently used metaphor of gatekeeper evokes expectations that if only the gatekeeper is eliminated, everybody will be able to have their say. But this ignores the fact that a user must be able to make his content understandable and relevant to others, as well as make sure others can find it on the Internet.
In short, it ignores the fundamentals of the professional approach to journalism: finding, selecting, processing information and events etc. An important point of this thesis is that one reason why UGC fails to make much of an impact may well be that the content found in established media is rooted in a much higher degree of professional skill than the apparent simplicity of a news story lets on; and that what users of news want is news produced professionally, based on a broad overview of a topic.