Purpose

When a concept is diffusely defined or, as this article argues, “taken for granted”, it becomes very difficult to track such concept on the literature and have some continuity as researchers build on top of previous results. This article proposes a definition for user-generated content, a term that though has lost some saliency, stands in the center or the social media phenomenon, so it should not be disregarded as an object of study.

Design/methodology/approach

Celebrating 20 years of the concept, this research performs a multidisciplinary literature review of 61 academic articles on UGC. Through deconstruction of the acronym UGC, it builds on the present converging, conflicting and diverging definitions and/or approaches to UGC on an attempt to consolidate a broader definition that encompasses the complexities of the phenomenon in a context of consolidation of social media, to be applied to social sciences.

Findings

Following the present analysis, UGC is defined as any kind of text, data or action performed by online digital systems users, published and disseminated by the same user through independent channels, that incur an expressive or communicative effect either on an individual manner or combined with other contributions from the same or other sources.

Originality/value

This is the first academic effort that aims to create an in-depth dialogue over the different approaches to UGC across disciplines on the social sciences field. It should help reignite interest in the acronym, which got somehow eclipsed by the broader field of social media; whilst without UGC, social media would not exist or would not have the same social impact it does in its current form. Analogously, UGC as a topic of research has been deeply affected by the emergence and consolidation of Social Media. As this debate evolves, this contribution should be helpful as a reference to operationalize UGC on future research.

Peer review

The peer-review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/OIR-06-2020-0258

中文翻译：

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“所谓的”UGC：社交媒体时代用户生成内容的更新定义

目的

当一个概念被广泛定义，或者如本文所说，“被认为是理所当然”时，很难在文献中追踪这样的概念，并且随着研究人员在先前结果的基础上建立一些连续性，这将变得非常困难。本文提出了用户生成内容的定义，该术语虽然失去了一些显着性，但仍处于中心或社交媒体现象，因此不应将其视为研究对象。

设计/方法/方法

为了庆祝这一概念诞生 20 周年，这项研究对关于 UGC 的 61 篇学术文章进行了多学科文献综述。通过对首字母缩略词 UGC 的解构，它建立在目前对 UGC 的融合、冲突和分歧定义和/或方法的基础上，试图在整合社交媒体的背景下整合一个涵盖现象复杂性的更广泛定义，以成为应用于社会科学。

发现

根据目前的分析，UGC被定义为在线数字系统用户执行的任何类型的文本、数据或动作，由同一用户通过独立渠道发布和传播，以个人方式或与来自相同或其他来源的其他贡献。

原创性/价值

这是第一个旨在就社会科学领域跨学科UGC的不同方法进行深入对话的学术努力。它应该有助于重新点燃人们对这个首字母缩略词的兴趣，它在某种程度上被更广泛的社交媒体领域所掩盖；如果没有 UGC，社交媒体将不存在或不会产生与当前形式相同的社会影响。类似地，UGC作为一个研究课题，也深受社交媒体的出现和巩固的影响。随着这场辩论的发展，这一贡献应该有助于作为在未来研究中实施 UGC 的参考。

同行评审

本文的同行评审历史可在以下网址获得：https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/OIR-06-2020-0258