Theorizing Agency in User-Generated Content

Article: Users like you? Theorizing agency in user-generated content. Media, Culture & Society, Vol. 31, No. 1, 41-58 (2009). José van Dijck

URL = http://mcs.sagepub.com/cgi/content/refs/31/1/41

Abstract

"To illustrate the complexity of user agency, the recent development of YouTube serves as a case of inquiry. Started as a video-sharing site in 2005 and run by three students from a Silicon Valley garage, the financially flailing but hugely popular site was bought up by Google in October of 2006 for the unprecedented sum of $1.6 billion. Obviously, Google’s acquisition was not about bringing innovative technology into the home, as its own GoogleVideo was already running on superior software; it was about bringing in communities of users. In less than a year,YouTube became an (independent) subsidiary of a commercial firm whose core interest is not in content per se, but in the vertical integration of search engines with content, social networking and advertising."