Crediting involves providing details about the person who captured the piece of UGC. Labeling, on the other hand, simply involves acknowledging that the content is user-generated. On this topic there are two different schools of thought. Some newsrooms want to be very clear that someone unconnected to the newsroom filmed the footage. They surmise that by labeling pictures as “Amateur Footage” or “Activist Footage” there is a safety net in place if something goes wrong. They also believe it is important to be transparent with the audience about where the footage has come from to ensure that if the uploader has a particular agenda, it is clear to the audience. Others believe it is obvious when the pictures are created by someone unconnected to the newsroom, and separate labels are of little worth and certainly don’t represent an insurance policy that would stand up in court.

Overall, our study showed that 72 percent of content did not have any form of description, be it a label (written or spoken) such as “amateur footage,” “activist video,” or even the unfortunate term, “source: YouTube.com.” There was certainly no uniformity about the way UGC is described to audiences.

And there was definitely no agreement about what constitutes best practice. There was a general reluctance for onscreen labels, with more in favor of including the fact that the pictures were sourced from the Web in the spoken script. There was also an awareness that transparency with the audience is crucial, but uncertainty about how best to provide it.³⁴

As part of the analysis, we examined whether each piece of UGC was described as content produced by someone unrelated to the newsroom (i.e., not a professional journalist). As discussed above, this took a number of forms (e.g., onscreen captions of “amateur footage,” “activist video,” or “YouTube.com”). Sometimes UGC content was obvious when it was embedded online, rendering a picture from Twitter or a video from YouTube evident.

This idea of referencing a social platform received mixed reviews. Some credit “YouTube.com: Jane Smith,” which automatically shows that it’s UGC as well as offers a credit. But others were very wary of referencing social platforms, both due to concerns about overtly promoting commercial companies and navigating content that often sits on multiple platforms.

One news organization detailed a clear policy on crediting both the platform and the username, describing how the organization’s head of legal had been very clear with them:

If you’re going to use something that was filmed when you weren’t there and no one you know was there, you can’t 100 percent ever say it is a fact. You just have to be belt and braces and say, “This is from this source.” It means a) you’re giving the person the credit where credit is due, and b) if it comes back to you, we did say this was not our cameraman.

Our numbers suggest that while this view might be the one shared by heads of legal and rights departments, many have not been successful in translating this into newsroom practice. As TABLE 7 illustrates, on television the majority of UGC was not described or labeled specifically as content that had been created by someone unrelated to the newsroom. It is worth noting that it is much clearer on websites that content has been sourced from the social Web, and is therefore UGC. This is due to the structural character that exists online. This makes it possible to embed content directly from social networks like Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, or Vine. When the descriptions are compared by channel, it was clear that some channels were more likely to describe content as UGC than others.

The fact that content had been sourced from the social Web was much clearer on the programs dedicated to social media that feature on all rolling news channels now. On Al Jazeera English, it was The Stream, on BBC World, it was BBC Trending, on France 24 there are two: Les Observateurs and Sur Le Net. These programs would play a YouTube video showing the full YouTube page. We counted this as a decryption of the provenance of a piece of content. And sometimes there wouldn’t be a specific caption describing the content, but the reporter or presenter would use language such as, “These pictures have emerged online.” This was also counted as a description of the footage as UGC.

TABLE 8 illustrates how different broadcasters performed in terms of labeling UGC. The differences were quite stark. For example, 51 percent of CNN International content on television was not described explicitly as UGC. Telesur didn’t label any content as UGC and NHK World failed to label 97 percent of the UGC it used. Online, some organizations were more likely to label content as UGC in some way. On the CNN International website, only 13 percent of the 450 pieces of UGC were not clearly labeled as UGC. In contrast, 45 percent of UGC content on BBC World online had nothing to describe the content as UGC in any form.

There were a number of different ways that broadcasters labeled UGC; euronews tended to use the caption “amateur video”:

In comparison, Al Jazeera English used the caption, “YouTube.com/Activist Video,” which interviewees explained had been integrated into newsroom guidelines a few months prior.

Should News Organizations Label?

While most interviewees agreed with the principle of crediting (even if it wasn’t being done systematically), the issue of labeling was less clear-cut. As one social media manager noted, “I think crediting is a no brainer, but [with labeling] I think you’ve got to make an editorial judgment about whether it’s necessary.” Another senior editor at a different news organization argued:

I think honestly whether or not you put amateur, most people can tell the difference. If you’re using amateur footage from Syria, come on, it’s been several years. Do you need to put amateur footage on every single image coming from Syria? Our audience is not dumb; they are not stupid. They know it’s not a journalist who shot the image, so I think it’s kind of redundant that we have to put it as a rule. Say it’s rule number 25 [that you always have to label]. I don’t think that works. I think it’s important to do it when it’s not clear.

There is obviously uncertainly about whether labeling is necessary, and if so, how to signpost to a television audience that a piece of content has been captured by someone unrelated to the newsroom. But there was an overall sense that people who capture and upload content often have an agenda, and that by not labeling, you’re not being transparent with your audience.

I think it’s all about transparency and I’m sure viewers and readers don’t like things that aren’t transparent. When it’s from UNHCR, I think they need to know it’s from UNHCR. Or when it’s from someone who happened to be on holiday in Italy who has this amazing picture of a flood, they need to know that it’s from that person because I think it changes the perspective of what we’re looking at. So therefore I think it’s very, very important that we know the source.

For some it was a quality issue: “The argument I use to everyone is, from an editorial point of view, do you not want to point out to people that this is not our material?” For others, it was an insurance policy:

In many of these cases, it might be the best defense you have. As in, we put it through the usual checks, we checked it as much as we possibly can, everything we normally do, and it still turned out to be wrong. But at least we said, “This is what this picture says it is.” I think this helps to some degree, but it doesn’t totally excuse you.

The Complexity of Syria

Almost all interviewees talked about their discomfort with having to rely so heavily on UGC from Syria, and struggled with identifying the best way to inform the audience about the activist groups that were uploading this content to YouTube.

Al Jazeera made a conscious editorial decision to label videos from Syria as “YouTube.com/Activist Video.” As one of its presenters argued, “We used to just say, ‘YouTube.com.’ Now it’s ‘YouTube.com/Activist Video.’ That was a conscious decision made. This is activist video. Take it. We will explain it as best we can, but remember where it came from and I think that was a very good thing to do.”

The AP includes descriptions about the different organizations in its dopesheets:

At the time that we arranged these relationships [with the different activist groups] we asked how they wanted to be referenced. For example, Ugarit News has the big logo that looked like the Sky News logo when it started, and so it was important to say that it was released by a group that calls itself Ugarit News and then to tell clients that this is not a recognized newsgathering organization. Similarly, I remember Shaam News Network had to [run] through our standards center as well. We ended up describing it as a loosely organized anti-Assad group based in and out of Syrian territory. They claim they do not have any connection to Syrian opposition parties or other states.

How to Label UGC

There is no consistency across the industry about how to label UGC. The phrase amateur video appears to be losing favor. “Now we don’t use [the label] ‘amateur video’ because, frankly, a lot of it isn’t amateur and I just don’t think that it encourages people. If people have captured the most compelling shots of a story and it’s running everywhere, I don’t think we should call them amateur.”

Most people recognize that simply writing “Source: YouTube” or “Source: Twitter” is inappropriate as well, arguing that these are not the sources, they are simply platforms. However, there is a great deal of disagreement about whether a news organization should use the name of the platform as part of the credit. The AP does not reference the platform, arguing it is simply the delivery mechanism and will only reference the platform if it believes it is relevant; for example, if the content has been live-streamed via a service like Bambuser or UStream. In this case, the AP would argue that the technology of the platform is part of how the UGC was created.

CNN International dislikes referencing the platform, reasoning that the same content can appear on multiple platforms, so it cannot reference just one. BBC World does not like to reference the platform as its editorial guidelines prevent undue prominence being given to a commercial entity. Broadcasters in France are not allowed to mention Facebook, Twitter, or YouTube on air for the same reason. The fact that some interviewees talked about uploaders wanting their specific YouTube usernames used on screen hoping that it would drive clicks to their video and therefore increase the money they would receive from YouTube, shows how newsrooms can be a conduit for traffic to commercial platforms.

However, many broadcasters with whom we spoke said they would mention the platform and a name, for example: Twitter/Jane Smith or Twitter.com/jsmith7564. By doing this, the broadcasters are providing a credit, but they are also signposting the fact that the content was not filmed by anyone related to the news organization.

Conclusions

As the discussion about the definition of UGC at the beginning of this report demonstrates, the term includes many different types of content. It might be footage filmed by a holiday-maker caught up in a breaking news event, a video shot by a Syrian activist group, a photo of refugees crossing the Jordanian border captured by a UNHCR staff member on an iPhone, or an anonymous viral video that has actually been created by a PR company for the launch of a new product. Simply labeling content “Amateur Footage” or “Source: Internet” does not capture these differences.

As one manager commented, “I don’t believe you can be too transparent, and I don’t believe there can be too much disclosure.” However, the question remains how to share this information with the audience. The Web makes all of this much easier, but with television it is more of a challenge, particularly when different regulations govern public service versus commercial broadcasters, and different countries have different legislation relating to social networks. Until someone is able to find a tag that adequately describes footage that has been captured by someone outside of the newsroom, these issues will remain. Fergus Bell from the AP has suggested the term “External Content,” or “ExCon” for short. Maybe that will catch on.

Most important is the need to describe who has uploaded the content, with a description of why their motivations should be taken into account by the audience. A video uploaded by Greenpeace or Shaam News Network should be treated very differently than one sourced from a passerby who happened to capture a breaking news event. However, the best way of accomplishing this is yet to be agreed upon across the industry.