The Good, the Bad and the Ugly of social media content, according to young people

The cultural industries have been greatly affected by the emergence of online user-generated content, often produced by non-professionals. A large amount of literature has been produced in the last two decades on the positive or negative role of such Web 2.0 production. The aim of this paper is to shed light on a “user-generated critique” of online cultural production by providing a qualitative analysis based on 225 young people's evaluations of Web 2.0 content. According to such a sample, there are several good and bad aspects of UGC, therefore there is also a “grey zone” of digital productions, such as content that is liked “despite” being considered awful. The paper aims to explore such positive, negative and grey dimensions of UGC and to stimulate new questions about the cultural appropriation of Web 2.0 content by audiences.