I’m traveling and received a few notes about a specific study that came out by Neil Thurman. Hat tip to Chris Mims.

The study can be found here: News Websites Have Uneasy Relationship with User-Generated Content

“Major news websites are struggling to make the most of readers’ contributions due to factors such as the costs of moderation and the varying quality of user-generated content (UGC), whilst in return readers are not fully engaging with the UGC initiatives.”

Alfred Hermida has a nice summary here as well.

What follows is really an unfiltered reaction - written rather quickly, as I’m traveling at the moment to partake in WeMedia. My point is: Take it for what it is - my gut instinct without having taken the time to examine things very closely. I don’t want to push the study aside, but I do have a few gripes with it.

I think the main problem here is the term “User generated content” which is rampant throughout the whole study.

Not to be nit-picky, but MySpace and Facebook are user-generated content too. They are doing just fine. The problem isn’t that people don’t want to participate, it’s in how newspapers are incorporating “user generated content” into the fold.

First: Let’s be more precise with our words (since that’s our business). Is this study about user generated content, or citizen journalism (which is a subset of UGC)?

If you take a look at FastCompany’s new website, they basically took Facebook functionality and graphed it over their content. Their vertical is smaller (Facebook’s vertical is anyone College age, FastCompany’s vertical are people interested in business/tech), but their level of participation is pretty good.

But again: This language of user generated content (or UGC) is kind of off-base. It makes the whole thing sound like participants are automated machines, something Amy Gahran pointed out during dinner when commenting on the phrase “user generated content.” Can you picture readers saying: “we are users and we generate content” - said in a Stephen Hawkins voice while doing the robot dance.

That doesn’t sound like something I want to partake in either.

I wonder though: Are comments “UGC”? What about tagging or submitting links to sites like Reddit. By that account - UGC is alive and well, just not on newspaper sites. So the question I ask, is that the user’s fault or the papers? Perhaps our thresholds are too high? We haven’t found a way to bring their participation in on mass scale that appeases our editorial fancies. My question is: Why does “UGC” have to be so active? Is there a way to bring readers into the news process without it feeling like homework? I’m interested in passive forms of UGC as well as more active.

In fact, the more active forms of UGC I wouldn’t even call “UGC” - to me they are acts of citizen journalism. That requires a different study all-together. I don’t know about all the cases that were studied in this article, but it sounds like they were actively making calls for people to participate in a non-meaningful way: “opine here.” Or as the BBC example was called “Have Your Say.”

Besides not being an enticing call to action, that’s essentially asking for comments.

If this study is telling me that comments are bad for newspapers, I can’t take any of it seriously.