Project description

User-generated content (also: User Generated Content, or UGC for short) is a collective term for a wide range of digital practices on the internet across all forms of art and media. Well-known examples include mashups, memes and fan fiction. The starting point for UGC is always the transformative adaptation of third-party works. UGC encompasses adaptations for a wide range of purposes, such as parody, homage, sequels, commentary , etc. Its publication on the web occurs primarily via social media.

On the one hand, UGC is characterised by the combination of creative and communicative endeavours aimed at cultural, social and political participation. On the other hand, it is characterised by the fact that these practices are shaped by non-professional contributors whose involvement is not aimed at economic profit. UGC is thus both a sphere of everyday culture and a dominant form of expression for active participation on the internet.

The starting point for DiCHOT’s transdisciplinary team is the initiative by the German legislature as part of the 2021 copyright reform to to classify UGC as a contemporary, inherently digital cultural heritage and, on that basis, to grant it a copyright exception leading to freedom from authorisation (‘pastiche’, Section 51a of the German Copyright Act (UrhG)).

As part of DiCHOT, the researchers are investigating the consequences – beyond copyright law – of understanding UGC as the digital cultural heritage of our time.

On the one hand, the aim is to develop digital teaching modules on this topic for secondary schools, in order to raise young people’s awareness of this new perspective on internet culture as cultural heritage, as well as of what cultural heritage is and how our understanding of it is evolving. On the other hand, the DiCHOT project aims to establish a network comprising not only schools and other educational institutions but also the German National Library and other memory institutions committed to web archiving and thus to the preservation of digital cultural heritage. Using the example of ‘UGC as youth culture’, the project aims to explore how the often volatile digital practices of social media can be adequately preserved, and to gather insights into the extent to which direct stakeholder dialogue– such as that with young people in this context – can be productively utilised in collection strategies for youth culture.

To this end, DiCHOT uses as a case study auditory, visual, textual and audiovisual UGC with a musical focus, which is created within the context of youth culture as part of the political awareness and engagement emerging amongst young people, and shared on social media.

By demonstrating that digital transformation is, above all, a cultural transformation, the DiCHOT project contributes to an understanding of digital transformation as a comprehensive process of social transformation. The active, playful, creative, adaptive and often politicised communication of users on the internet via UGC is a prime example of this.

Project framework

Funding Body

Volkswagen Foundation, ‘Change! Fellowships’ funding programme (press release on the grant award dated 14 January 2025 for the 2024 round of proposals)

Partner

PD Dr Dr Frédéric Döhl, German National Library

Project staff member and coordinator at the UOL

Dr Jan Torge Claussen

Duration

1 September 2025 to 31 August 2030