The Role of User-Generated Content in Shaping Cultural Norms

ABSTRACT
This research paper will examine how user-generated content (UGC), content produced and shared by people on digital platforms, has played a major role in shaping cultural norms. Over the last two decades, social media platforms like YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Reddit and blogs have given people the power to create and spread ideas, behaviours, and values at a humongous speed that was never possible before. This research will look into how this shift has changed the way culture and norms have been made, who makes it, and what happens when these cultural norms are set by individuals on online media. This study argues that while user-generated content has opened places for marginalized people to raise their voices, it has also created harmful norms via algorithm- friendly content. And how algorithms are shaped, what content gets seen and what norms get reinforced. This study also draws on influential behaviour and online communities in producing shared values and behaviours.