Types of Digital Content
Computer-Mediated Content (CMC) refers to any form of content that is created, shared, and consumed through digital platforms, applications, or networks using computers or smart devices. It encompasses all types of content exchanged over the internet, including text, images, videos, audio, graphics, and interactive formats, and is central to today’s digital communication ecosystem.
CMC plays a major role in digital marketing, social media, online learning, journalism, e-commerce, and entertainment. Its structure depends on who creates it, why, and how it is distributed.
Types of Digital Content under CMC
1. Professionally-Generated Content (PGC)
Profession-generated-content (PGC) – It relates to news and editorials – views, opinions, commentary, comments and analysis, technological, medical, scientific and research findings from say, journalists, technologists and scientists. Content created by experts, brands, media houses, or professionals for commercial or informational purposes.
Examples:
Netflix shows, YouTube Originals, news articles by The Hindu, NDTV, or BBC
Branded social media campaigns
Product explainer videos by Apple or Nike
Key Features:
High production quality
Controlled by professionals or companies
Usually monetised (ads, subscriptions, or sales)
2. User-Generated Content (UGC)
Content created by individual users, not companies or brands, and shared on digital platforms. User-generated content (UGC) – this refers to the content created by the audience as well as citizen journalists who live, play and participate in debating, raving, ranting, challenging, disputing on the blogosphere and SM and on public forum, online discussions.
Examples:
Instagram posts, TikTok reels, YouTube vlogs
Reddit threads, Quora answers
Product reviews on Amazon or Flipkart
Key Features:
Authentic and personal
Drives community engagement
Influences consumer behaviour and brand reputation
3. Expert-Generated Content (EGC)
A sub-category of PGC but focused specifically on domain expertise.
Examples:
Research papers by scholars
TED Talks
Whitepapers, case studies, and industry reports
Key Features:
Data-driven and highly credible
Appeals to niche audiences
Often used in education, policymaking, and corporate decision-making
4. Curated Content
Content collected, organised, and shared from multiple sources by individuals, brands, or algorithms.
Examples:
Pinterest boards
Spotify playlists
News aggregation platforms like Flipboard or Google News
Key Features:
Doesn’t require creating original content
Adds value by filtering and organising existing content
Common in marketing and knowledge-sharing
5. Sponsored / Branded Content
Content paid for by a brand but designed to blend seamlessly with the platform’s native content style.
Examples:
Instagram sponsored posts
YouTube integrations within influencer videos
Articles labelled “Paid Partnership” on news sites
Key Features:
Combines storytelling with subtle brand promotion
Often used in influencer marketing
Builds trust if executed authentically
6. Live & Interactive Content
Real-time content designed for direct audience participation.
- Examples:
- YouTube or Instagram Live streams
- Twitter Spaces and Clubhouse discussions
- Interactive webinars and polls
- Key Features:
- High engagement potential
- Instant feedback loops
- Increasingly used in online education, product launches, and virtual events
7. Community-Generated Content (CGC)
Content collectively created and maintained by a community or open-source contributors.
Examples:
Wikipedia articles
Open-source documentation on GitHub
Fan fiction forums and collaborative blogs
Key Features:
Decentralised authorship
Community-driven validation
Powerful for knowledge-sharing and collective intelligence
8. Algorithmically-Generated Content (AGC) / AI-Generated Content
Content created using artificial intelligence or automation tools.
Examples:
ChatGPT-written blogs
DALL·E / MidJourney AI images
Automated sports summaries or stock market reports
Key Features:
Highly scalable and cost-efficient
Increasingly used in marketing, publishing, and design
Raises concerns around authenticity and ethics
Summary Table
| Type | Creator | Examples | Purpose |
|---|---|---|---|
| PGC | Professionals, brands | Netflix, Apple ads | Monetisation, branding |
| UGC | Users, individuals | Instagram posts, vlogs | Engagement, influence |
| EGC | Experts, researchers | TED Talks, whitepapers | Education, authority |
| Curated Content | Platforms, marketers | Pinterest, Spotify | Value aggregation |
| Sponsored Content | Brands + creators | Paid Instagram collabs | Subtle promotion |
| Live / Interactive | Brands + users | YouTube Live, webinars | Engagement, participation |
| CGC | Communities | Wikipedia, GitHub | Collective knowledge |
| AGC | AI tools, bots | ChatGPT blogs, AI art | Automation, scale |
Insight
In computer-mediated content ecosystems, PGC and UGC are the two primary categories, but the digital landscape has evolved to include at least eight major types when you factor in AI-generated, community-driven, and interactive formats.
Artificial Intelligence-Generated-content(AiGC). Artificial Intelligence-generated-content(AiGC). – programmatically created content which are of two types that can have a manipulative effect: (a) Generative – AI-generated mediatext – any type of content including text, image, video or audio and (b) Transformative which can edit by altering, improving original content, paraphrasing, summarising, translating or rephrasing text.
The cyberspace is awash with personal, promotional, business and professional data while fostering engagement and creativity within an audience. Basically, there are eight types of content which are conflowing in the mediasphere, the majority of which are unscrutinised and need to be filtered with critical thinking (CT).
The questions raised by the above scenario are: how deliberative, scrutinising, evaluative and critical are citizens in their online posts? A sample of three responses to these questions posted on Quora platform are indicative of the internet’s impact on critical thinking as a contentious topic: (1) Eugen Grathwohl highlights that the internet exacerbates the spread of misinformation, particularly through social media platforms like Facebook. While facts require effort to verify, misinformation is easily absorbed and shared, even by intelligent individuals, when it aligns with personal fears. (2) James Keenley shifts the blame from the internet to human behaviour, emphasising that our failure to engage in critical reading and thinking, coupled with reliance on superficial sources, hinders critical evaluation. He underscores the internet’s potential as a vast knowledge repository that remains underutilised and (3) Stephen Whitehead argues that the internet does not significantly influence critical thinking, as most users seek information that confirms their pre-existing beliefs and fall prey to fake news. He advocates teaching critical thinking in schools, citing Finland as a global leader in this area, while pointing out the lag in other nations, such as the United States.(Quora)
Livingstone (2019) presses for a two way trust between the media and the audience. (Sonia Livingstone, 2019) What are the challenges and how can we deal with them? Livingstone asserts that media literacy skills must serve citizens as well as consumers.
Today’s journalism needs to move beyond the BBC’s triune responsibilities; inform, educate and entertain which was enunciated in the BBC Charter almost a century ago (1st January 1927). While adopting several key journalism imperatives of a digital journalist includes: (a) upholding the principle of freedom of expression and right to access information, and (b) fostering media that is free, participatory, pluralistic, inclusive, and independent as essentials for transcending the traditional Reithian purposes in order to: (a) advise citizens, (b) enable the development of informed citizenry, (c) empower citizens to make informed decisions, (d) participate in governance and (e) hold the government accountable for its actions.
It must be noted that even though AiGC is artificially created it’s people who drive it as reminded by former UN General Secretary Kofi Annan in 2003; ‘while technology shapes the future, it is people who shape technology, and decide what uses it can and should be put’. Kofi Anan’s concern for safety reminds us about the recently released ChatGPT – an algorithm-powered application, which Alex Kantrowitz described as, “is scary-good, crazy-fun, and so far not particularly evil. Within a week of its launch on YouTube 30th Nov. 2022 ChatGPT attracted millions of views. It is touted as the most impressive development in Ai to provide us with convenience and time saving. (ChatGPT, 02.12.2022) Algorithm is the set of instructions and rules used by computers on data to solve problems, or to execute a task (cited in Head, Fister & MacMillan, 2020)
Discourses on the forums, blogs, vblogs, podcasts and websites comments, into content creation enabling access to almost anyone equipped with an internet connection to produce and disseminate information. This phenomenon, while empowering, has resulted in an overwhelming influx of content – the good, bad, and ugly as outright harmful making it harder than ever for journalists to distinguish fact from fiction.
The flip side of AI is conspicuously contrasting. The growing democratisation of AI tools has concerned journalism, lowering the barriers to entry for content creation and sharing, and granting virtually anyone internet access to run their channels. While this shift is empowering billions of individuals from all walks of life, it has also led to an unstoppable and uncontrollable surge of content from over a huge number of active internet users, ranging from valuable to misleading or harmful, increasingly overwhelming journalists and non-journalists who are struggling to discern fact from fiction. By October 2024 the total of 5.52 billion people around the world were using the internet equivalent to 67.5 percent of the world’s total population. Eighty percent of all online content is consumer-generated. Ninety percent of consumers have posted an experience with a brand or product on social media. Eighty six percent of people consider customer reviews an essential resource for making purchasing decisions. (DataReportal)
The foundational principles form a conceptual framework which is built on several critical ideas:
(1) Recognising humans as media creators, interpreters, and disseminators of content embedded within the information ecosystem. This perspective highlights the risks of treating the human mind merely as a database.
(2) Acknowledging social media as deeply entwined with daily life and human interactions is evident of integration of social media with human experience.
(3) Drawing on the reflective and inquiry-based principles of Socrates and Chanakya’s Arthashastra to promote critical examination of beliefs and knowledge.
(4) Building justified knowledge in today’s world stresses the importance of understanding how we know what we know, especially in an era defined by fake news and ‘fabricated truths’.
(5) Propositional knowledge requires that the satisfaction of its belief condition be suitably related to the satisfaction of its truth condition. In other words, a knower must have adequate indication that a belief qualifying as knowledge is actually true. In Theaetetus, Plato argues that knowledge of “true belief accompanied by a rational account” is conditional upon the belief being justified and true.
In focusing on epistemic knowledge building the author identifies four key elements for acquiring knowledge: (1) Truth: Ensuring information accuracy, (2) Belief: Accepting information as true, (3) Justification: Supporting beliefs with valid evidence and (4) Learning, Unlearning, and Relearning which is key to helping individuals to adopt a dynamic approach to knowledge.
The following objectives provide the foundation for discerning truth in a complex information landscape. They form the author’s primary goals to: (1) Introduce metaphysical thinking to empower journalists and citizen journalists, (2) Equip content creators with advanced skills to analyse embedded and encoded messages in news and information, (3) Evaluate the role of journalism in fostering informed citizenship and promoting vibrant and healthy democracy. The absence of CML undermines the freedom of expression and complicates efforts to reassess journalism’s epistemic role as it leaves citizens ill-equipped to identify bogus information, perpetuates misinformation and weakens the public’s ability to engage in informed democratic discourses.
With an interventionist approach, this author adopts a CML framework to explore strategies for encouraging multiplatform societies to participate in freedom of expression as informed citizens and restore trust in traditional media or legacy media while evaluating social media as a potential source of credible information.