technoculture314-09

With the rise of web 2.0 there is an increase of user generated content. Users can upload new stories to newspaper websites and also upload their own recordings to television network websites. This leads users to believe they can have a creative input into the news and are contributing positively to the mass media. However this too could be seen as a ploy by the media agencies to lead the public into a false sense of proximity in that they believe they are contributing but the media agencies may be gaining stories for free or gaining higher audience numbers. It could also be contested whether or now these stories and videos submitted by 'users' and the public actually get used by the media agencies. There may be heavy filtering of the stories and selective angles and stories used by the agencies which may deconstruct the original position of the publisher. YouTube is a website which requires a high amount of user generated content. As the reader suggests "YouTube's case perfectly illustrates the need for a more comprehensive approach to user agency" (Van Dijick, 2009). This shows that although YouTube has many links to large corporates and movie companies many users extract these videos and create their own alternate video 'mashups' and video responses creating another dimension to critical debate. However in a similar way to which media agencies filter stories and video YouTube can also remove videos and corporations and lobby to take videos off the site too. One must question then where lays the real middle ground for a true dimension for User generated content?