Fame to Fortune: Exploring the User Generated Digital Content Ecosystem
COM2 Level 4
Executive Classroom, COM2-04-02
ABSTRACT:
This research explores the development of user-generated content (UGC) ecosystem, amid the rise of creative economy driven by technologies that allow consumers to assume the role of creator. Despite the prevalence of UGC and its commercialized potential in light of the success of some digital celebrities, there is a lack of systematic understanding of how challenges ensuing the growth of these self-generated content that are unstructured and loosely regulated, can be circumvented particularly through the coordinated actions of various key stakeholders. This study offers an analysis of the recent emergence of digital celebrities, or Wang Hong in China. By adopting value co-creation as the theoretical lens, this study presents the interdependent activities, which underscore the co-evolvement, cooperation and competition among the ecosystem stakeholders. This study makes two contributions by: 1) offering an ecological analysis on the development of emergent digital content businesses built on creative user-generated content, and 2) exemplifying the need for a refined definition of UGC in view of the elevation of UGC quality from an amateur to a professional level of production. We aim to present how innovation is fostered in a digitally driven creative economy with an expanded scope of governance and practice.
BIODATA:
Carmen LEONG is a lecturer at the School of Information System and Technology Management, UNSW Business School. She graduated from the School of Computing NUS in 2015. Her research interests include digital empowerment in social studies and digitally enabled strategic transformation in organizations. Her work has been accepted in top ranked academic journals including Management Information Systems Quarterly (MISQ), Journal of Association of Information Systems, and Communications of the AIS. Feel free to contact her at carmen.leong@unsw.edu.au if you would like to know more!