Welcome back to "On Assignment," your deep dive into the evolving world of journalism. I'm your guest host today, Doctor Marisol Treviño, and we're tackling a topic that's reshaping how we consume news: User-Generated Content, or UGC.

It's a phenomenon that's brought both incredible opportunities and some pretty significant challenges to newsrooms worldwide. In this bonus episode, we'll explore how ordinary citizens are becoming content creators, how news organizations are working to verify this flood of information, and most importantly, how they can build and maintain trust with you – their audience – in this new media landscape.

Let's start with the basics. What exactly is user-generated content? Well, it's any material – text, images, videos, audio, even memes – created and shared by users of platforms and products, including social media and news websites.

Now, this phenomenon isn't entirely new. Historically, we've seen early forms of UGC in letters to the editor or phone-in radio programs. But here's what's different: the proliferation of networked devices and interactive platforms has led to an explosion of UGC, fundamentally transforming audiences from passive information receivers into active content creators. It's effectively democratized the media landscape.

The smartphone era was really the watershed moment. Suddenly, everyday citizens with cellphones and camcorders could capture major events when professional journalists couldn't be there – think the 2004 Indonesian tsunami or the Arab Spring in 2010. This locally sourced video filled crucial gaps, and news organizations quickly realized that audiences were drawn to the sense of immediacy and authenticity that shaky cellphone footage provided.

Dr. Michael Lithgow, an associate professor of communication and media studies at Athabasca University, notes that this "heightened sense of authenticity" is why audiences respond so strongly to it – it creates what he calls "ethical subjectivities."

So how are citizens actually creating this content? The methods are pretty diverse. According to the Columbia Journalism Review's "Guide to Crowdsourcing," citizens can participate in "crowdsourcing" by voting on which stories reporters should tackle, witnessing breaking news events, sharing personal experiences, contributing specialized expertise or data, or even volunteering skills to help create a news story.

Here's a great example: New York Times health care reporter Elisabeth Rosenthal invited readers to share their costs and bills for hip replacements. She got 512 responses that informed her award-winning series "Paying Till It Hurts." Similarly, ProPublica successfully gathered over 2,900 personal experiences from Vietnam veterans and their families for an Agent Orange investigation. Public radio station WNYC's "Curious City" initiative lets listeners vote on story assignments – they've generated thousands of questions and hundreds of stories.

These contributions often come through dedicated apps like Al-Arabiya's "I see," or via social media, email, and SMS.

What motivates these citizen contributors? It could be a desire to share valuable insights, to feel part of the news process, or even to actively debunk political misinformation, especially for influential accounts. Some platforms even use digital badges to encourage participation.

But here's an important caveat: while UGC is abundant, it's often produced by a small but very active minority of media users. And much of the content circulating on social media still originates from traditional media industries – users are primarily distributing it, not creating it from scratch.

Now, this brings us to the critical challenge for newsrooms: how do you vet all this content? The reality is that UGC is not always reliable, and its veracity needs to be checked before it can be used in news reporting. This is crucial because, as the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism points out, UGC has the potential to blur the traditional boundaries of journalism by elevating the work of non-professional actors who aren't trained in professional norms and ethical standards.

Journalists express real concerns about the quality, objectivity, independence, and accountability of user contributions, noting that they often carry personal bias. In fact, research by Grosser, Wintterlin, and Hase suggests that the use of UGC can actually decrease the perceived trustworthiness of news articles, even when verification is attempted. Less than half of respondents even noticed when verification was employed.

Despite these challenges, newsrooms have developed several methods for vetting UGC. Human moderation remains crucial, particularly for complex human communication like discourse and hate speech, because algorithms struggle with nuances like humor and irony. This is often paired with automated moderation systems that can efficiently filter out trolls and clear over 80% of content automatically, helping ensure a respectful environment for engagement.

News organizations also rely on rigorous cross-checking, often requiring information to be confirmed by a national news agency or at least two independent, trusted sources like Reuters or the BBC. Direct contact with content creators – by phone, email, or social media – is a key step to confirm authenticity and seek permission for use. Some newsrooms even use crowdsourcing for verification, especially when dealing with content from conflict zones, collaborating with activists or citizen journalists on the ground.

Specialized tools and dashboards are emerging to assist in this process, offering computational help in assessing veracity and tracking rumor propagation, though human judgment is still vital.

However, the vetting process is far from simple. Journalists often face immense time pressure and high workloads, making extensive verification difficult, especially for breaking news. There's also a recognized lack of specific training in verification techniques for many journalists – most are relying on what they call "journalistic common sense."

Organizational constraints don't help either – technology limitations and the tension between using personal versus organizational social media accounts further complicate matters. Anonymous accounts, which are common on social media, also pose a significant challenge to identifying and verifying sources. Because of these difficulties, UGC is often still considered a secondary source, frequently associated with "soft news" or local human-interest stories rather than hard news.

Finally, let's talk about how news organizations can build and maintain trust with audiences when incorporating UGC. The fundamental shift here is from a "top-down lecture to an open conversation."

To foster trust, news organizations must actively engage with and reward their contributors – for example, by sending thank-you emails or giving on-air shout-outs. Transparency is absolutely key: be clear with contributors about how their content will be used and explain the verification process to the audience, making them aware of potential issues or hidden agendas.

By doing this, news outlets can give audiences a voice and engage them more deeply with the news and its production process. This engagement, in turn, can lead to increased loyalty and even positive financial outcomes like higher subscription rates and return visits.

While UGC increases authenticity, professional journalists retain a crucial role in filtering and verifying the content. Maintaining their "gatekeeping" role is seen as essential for upholding high standards of journalism.

A study by Olsen, Solvoll, and Futsæter found that, particularly during a crisis like COVID-19, audiences were generally supportive of news media's gatekeeper functions related to quality control and selection of important news. Journalists recognize the complementary potential of UGC, especially for hyper-local and personal stories, but they also acknowledge that practical integration is often limited by newsroom culture, work division, and professional values.

For crowd-based fact-checking platforms, ensuring independence and diversity among fact-checkers is vital to mitigate polarization, as influential users can lead to lower consensus levels and more perceived argumentation. Guidelines for effective fact-checks suggest providing context, linking trustworthy sources, and maintaining a positive, explanatory tone to enhance helpfulness. The "I see" app, for example, successfully increased user interactions, making contributors feel more connected to Al-Arabiya.

As we navigate this evolving digital landscape, it's clear that successful integration of UGC hinges on a commitment to transparency, rigorous verification, and genuine audience engagement. This is how journalism can continue to thrive – adapting to new technologies while upholding its core mission of informing the public.

That's all for this bonus episode of "On Assignment." Thank you for joining me as we delved into the fascinating world of user-generated content. Join us next time for more insights into the future of media.