- Related Topics:
- user-created content
- mass media
- social media
content community
Content communities consist of online social media platforms that allow users to share multimedia materials including user-produced materials. This entry first introduces the origins of content communities before discussing what they are, who uses them, and their range of uses.
The culture and mass media industries are changing due to mutations of three different natures: technological, narrative, and participatory. The advent of the Internet and social media platforms has allowed content to be distributed on a global basis by both institutions and individual users. Production teams use technology—particularly online media—to create and share content that tells a narrative across different platforms and to enhance the appeal and immersiveness of narrative content. Audience members are becoming increasingly engaged, and their creative abilities have been empowered through technology, as it is easier than ever before to share items with, potentially, millions of people.
Examples of content communities include video-sharing platforms such as YouTube and Vimeo; image-sharing platforms such as Instagram and Flickr; presentation-sharing services such as Slideshare; writing communities such as FanFiction.net; and mixed-media discussion communities such as Reddit. While the shared material is available to anyone (unless otherwise specified, as when an element is set to private), it is necessary to register, open an account, and set up a user profile in order to upload items. Upon uploading something, the user chooses a title and possibly writes a description. In addition to offering this platform and storage space for free, content communities provide a certain amount of feedback on any given piece, such as the number of times the item was viewed and the number of likes and other engagement metrics.
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While commenting and liking constitute features that are usually only available to registered members, in general, every external (or anonymous) view is computed, along with those of members. Most content communities allow users to search uploaded material through keywords, hashtags, metadata, recommendation systems, or algorithmic discovery tools. Only registered users can subscribe to individual users and so be notified when new content is uploaded by the latter.
A content community can be seen as an online database of multimedia content. The origins of the content can vary; the uploaded element can originate from copyrighted material or be created by the users themselves. In the case of the former, content communities that upload film or television clips or music videos, or sometimes entire films or TV series episodes, can be subject to copyright infringement actions, often simply in the form of having these items removed. Content communities are one aspect of social media, a term generally used to refer to the technologies that facilitate the creation and sharing of information in communities and networks. In addition to providing a place for registered users to interact, such places offer ways for members to show their appreciation for a film, television program, book, or even a brand or to discuss it or have access to additional content offered by institutional online pages on these platforms.
The most active and engaged individuals, commonly referred to as fans, can also undertake activities relative to creation and content production. These can include writing extensions of existing stories (fan fiction), producing self-made videos (scenes or video logs: vlogs) or video montages (fanvids), and creating costumes (cosplays). These authors are gathered in informal online groups and spread their creation (or representations of their creations, i.e., photographs of their costumes) within content communities and so into the public sphere.
While online communities such as Facebook and X (formerly Twitter) allow users to share web links, videos, and photographs, it is not their main purpose, and the various works made by users from a creative perspective (arts photographs, pictures of their creations, self-shot or montage videos, written texts, and presentations) are voluntarily shared on platforms specifically dedicated to that: content communities. Other users, of course, may also utilize content communities to share material for other purposes such as sharing knowledge through presentations or video tutorials, or sharing their artwork, photography, music covers, or original songs. Like many digital platforms, content communities often use targeted advertising based on user activity, browsing behavior, demographics, and inferred interests.
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In academia, a scholar’s professional peers are asked to provide their opinions and advice on a submitted piece, which the author is then expected to consider in the rewriting or revising of their work. Because of the participatory nature inherent in the forms of social media discussed here, and their constantly open feedback channel, the creative and commentary process enabled by content communities could be somewhat compared to this academic peer-review process, even though it is not mandatory to rework the piece based on peer feedback.
The original version of this article was published by SAGE Publications in The SAGE International Encyclopedia of Mass Media and Society.