What is UGC? And how does it affect media credibility?

How credible is the media? But above all, is the web more reliable or rather television and the rest of traditional media? Recent American research conducted by Edelman has discovered substantial equality between the two worlds: 66% of the people interviewed place full trust in the information coming from traditional media, such as television, radio, or the press. 63% instead believe the information coming from search engines, like Google, to be reliable.

This trust of the web goes down if the source of the information is social media. Just 41% of you trust it, perhaps because of the fake news phenomenon that in recent years has significantly reduced the credibility of social networks in their role as distributors of information, data, and news.

We have all become publishers

Beyond the data, one thing is certain. New technology has opened the confines of encyclopedias. At this point, it is easy to find any kind of information, but falling into the traps – or "hoaxes" – is a sure risk. It is becoming more and more difficult to ascertain the truth in the news that we get.

But not only.

The rules that underlie journalism have gone to shreds, and the boundary between “professionals” and media content creators have also been redesigned and is now blurred. Anyone can share their version of the facts, giving them their own vision, posting it on their social profile, or on their own webspace.

Everyone has become a publisher for a more or less wide audience. Anyone can speak through a powerful media, which triggers word of mouth, whether it be their own truth or an invention of something credible or completely absurd, without anyone caring too much about it.

And this is how the blogs, initially manned by "competent" people who made their knowledge available in exchange for some fast-paced advertising, began to give way to those who, to emerge and have notoriety, invented stories, facts, and misdeeds and have made it a market.