Learner Response

UGC has been around in one form or another since the earliest days of the Internet itself. But in the past five years, thanks to the growing availability of high-speed Internet access and research technology, it has become one of the dominant forms of social media. It is currently one of the fastest growing forms of content on the Internet. UGC is changing how audiences interact with the Internet, and how advertisers reach those audiences. In 2006, UGC sites such as Youtube attracted 69 million users in the US alone, and in 2007 generated $1 billion in advertising revenue. By 2011, UGC sites are projected to attract 101 million users in the U.S. and earn $4.3 billion in ad revenue.

The internet revolution has allowed users today on the internet have more power than the hegemony of old media. The internet today allows more freedom than old media does or ever has done. Users can create their own explicit content which can be watched by anyone on the internet, which would not be possible to do so with both platforms print or broadcasts. One example of how the internet has been a source of freedom is the Arab Spring. Social networking sites such as Facebook were used to create events to arrange meetings in different Arab countries. The use of Facebook proved to be successful and became known to the world of what the internet had helped to create. The freedom that users are allowed on the e-media is the only platform that is felt to have a sense of freedom and escapism, which is worrying for big hegemony companies owning much of their conglomerates on the print and broadcast platform.