Internet is unfair – Exploring exploitation and consumer power

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Internet is unfair – Exploring exploitation and consumer power.
Introduction
As a convergence medium of digital generation, Internet has a rapid
development in today’s world. Tiziana (2000) argued that ‘the Internet is
animated by cultural and technical labor through and through, a continuous
production of value that is completely immanent to the flows of the network
society at large.’ Internet users have been adding almost 1 million more users
each month since 1997, according to the head of the UN's telecommunications
agency, Hamadoun Toure (2011), the number of Internet users worldwide has
reached the two billion mark already. In other words, with the world's
population exceeding 6.8 billion, nearly one person in three surfs online.
Moreover, Nielsen and the Pew Research Center found that ‘55 percent of
Americans use the Internet every day’ and devote ‘60 hours a month online.’
(Catherine, S., 2010). With the advent of cyber generation, more and more
online activities appeared, people spend their time online and cyber world
seems to be their second life. With the wave of online activities increased,
user-generated content become important than ever and these creative
content controlled Generation Y in some way, especially purchasing decisions.
In terms of such influence of user-generated content, commercial companies
began to make strategies around achieving the value of these content. Thus,
because of creative content, Internet users not only are being as customers
but also have the identities of producers. With these changes, the relationship
between commercial companies and Internet users has changed as well,
particular in economic aspect, the relationship become even more intimate
(José van Dijck, 2008). In this study, economy is the main perspective that will
be exploring.

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In recent critical analysis of digital media, user-generated content and cultural
industries, there is a dominant theme that they involve unpaid work on the part
of participants (David, H., 2010). In the digital era, Internet users participate
online activities as free labor to commercial companies.
Have you ever wondered about why websites seem to know exactly how to
placing the advertisements about the merchandise you would be willing to
purchase? Technically, websites contract with the commercial companies and
put these influential advertisements on the pages for increasing partnering
business. However, how these companies find these advertisements which
useful to customers? In fact, in online activities like with every click and every
webpages users visit, the personal information including credit card numbers,
social security numbers, passwords, and even medical records, have the
potential to be accessed by third parties without any permission. However,
these are invisible contribution from users, a mount of user-generated content
used by companies are visible contribute. In cyber area, users like to
exchange their ideas and share their own experience to others for helping. The
most common visible contribution to commercial companies is making
comments on purchasing items. In this case, from customers view, buyers
share experience to strangers for giving advice on their purchasing decisions,
however, these information are using for improve their products by companies
with no thanks to producers.
In this research, the main argument is to explore the exploitation and
consumer power from economic perspective in Generation Y. Furthermore,
exploring whether Internet is an unfair platform for users. Using the term unfair
because most Internet users don’t realize that their contribution is more
significant to corporations than it is to them and especially in economic
perspective. The research will identify the relationship between commercial
companies and Internet users. Additionally, analyzing who get the most

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economic benefits from Internet platform, furthermore, exploring the
exploitation of user generated content and its value to commercial companies.
Based on case study and interview in quantitative methodology, through
responds after interviewees realizing their position in economy perspective
online, exploring users’ understanding on user-generated content value and
economic benefits online.
However, all research in this study is in specific boundary. Some words and
phrases have limited definition like economic benefits and commercial
company, at the meantime, analysis from this study is in economic
perspective.
Specific definitions in this study
This research is about exploring exploitation and consumer power, additionally,
analyzing whether Internet is unfair platform to users, furthermore, explaining
the results to users and exploring their understanding in user-generated
content and their position in internet. In the meantime, this study is specifically
focus on analysis the one who gain more economic benefits online,
commercial companies or individuals at Generation Y. Under this
circumstance, some words or phrases have a specific meaning in this essay,
such as economic benefits, commercial companies. As following, I will define
these specific words and core subjects for this essay.
Generation Y
Recently, marketers have been paid attention to a certain group of consumers
because of their strong roles in influence public’s purchasing decisions. These
power purchasers are known as Generation Y (Corey, E., 2012). Generation Y
consists of the segment of the population born between 1978 and 1994, which

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also known as The Net Generation and Millennials. In Sheahan’s book about
Generation Y (2005), he indicated that while Generation Y people are creative
and ambitious, they are difficult to manage. However, owning to these
specializations of this generation, the development of user-gradated content
has been promoted a lot.
According to MarketingProfs via a Bazaarvoice survey (2012), Generation Y
counts for 25 percentage of the US population, moreover, these millennials’
annual spending power of over $200 billion will eclipse baby boomers’ by 2017.
With that kind of purchasing power, commercial companies want to figure out
the purchasing habits and alter marketing strategy for this huge demographic
of power purchasers. In this situation, user-generated content becomes a
significant key for marketers. From the survey, it turns out that Generation Y
cares about recommendations from strangers more than their friend or family
members, which is means users’ comments on goods work for them. More
than 8 in 10 say user-generated content from people online influences what
they buy.
Under this situation, the main object in this study will be focus on Generation Y,
analyzing their understanding and reaction for the ‘real look’ of Internet.
Economic benefits
According to the business dictionary, economic benefits is benefit quantifiable
in terms of money, such as revenue, net cash flow, net income. Meanwhile,
through Investor words, the definition of economic benefits is similar which
defined a benefit that can be expressed numerically as an amount of money
that will be saved or generated as the result of an action. It also mentioned
about the importance of economic benefits when comes to a business case.
Making a business case for a new strategy or product idea usually involves

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pointing out the economic benefits of the proposal to decision makers,
enabling them to measure the financial effects of the proposed change.
By summarizing these definitions, in short, economic benefit means an
increase of money. When it comes to Internet environment, money cannot only
refer to currency but also virtual currency and incomes that through network
marketing.
Everything cannot be created from nothing, so as money. In reality worlds,
through business event, take a simple explanation, goods can transferred into
money. While same things happened in cyber world, contents online can be
changed into money. For instance, blogging is a popular way to make money
online nowadays. The key here is that companies selling advertising through
Internet from many services. After starting up a personal blog, writers sign up
for ad services like Google AdSense, which post those familiar sponsored links
you often see at the top and on the sides of Web sites. The money will come
through the ad service when your blog readers click on those ads (John Fuller
and Stephanie Crawford, 2013). In this way of raising money, the most
important thing is that the blog should be consistently interesting and well
written, in other words, it is a kind of transfer contents into money. There are
some successful blogs, like ‘I Can Has Cheezburger?’ and ‘Boing Boing’,
which is so famous that companies want to reach their fan base with graphical
advertising around the blog (John Fuller and Stephanie Crawford, 2013).
In terms of this perspective, economic benefits in Internet have specific
meaning, and the type of money and the way of transfer are all in specific
boundary. Thus, in this essay, the definition will be a specific one for Internet
platform, which refer to transfer user-generated content to economy value
(either money or virtual currency).

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Commercial company
According to Longman Business English Dictionary, commercial company is a
company that has to follow normal accepted business practices and operates
in order to make a profit a company that is not a financial institution. However,
in the cyber world, commercial company still playing the role to provide an
economic cycle for the Internet. In this essay, the commercial company refers
to those companies that participant in online economy.
User-generated content
The rapid advance of technological process over the past years has provided
general public a new ways of interaction and communication via Internet (Nico,
C., Alexander K., Daniel S. and Matthias S., 2009). With more and more users
participate on online activities, user-generated content (UGC) showing on the
stage of Internet. Furthermore, UGC ‘is one of the main features of this
so-called participative web’. (Wunsch-Vincent, Vickery, 2007)
UGC appears in many forms on internet as ‘a broad variety of channels to
grant information, views and media to other people’ (Wunsch Vincent, Vickery,
2007). It has variety content types: text, images, audio, video, customer
reviews/feedbacks, educational content, mobile content, and virtual content. In
the meantime, internet offers different platforms to fit these content such as
blogs, wikis (text-based collaboration formats), feedback-allowing sites like
Amazon.com, group-based aggregation like del.icio.us, podcasting, hosting
sites like YouTube and Flickr, social networking sites like Facebook (Nico, C.,
Alexander, K., Daniel, S. and Matthias, S., 2009).

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As there is no commonly agreed definition of UGC, there are three main
characteristics from the Organization for Economic Co-operation and
Development (OECD) as follows: Publication requirement, Creative effort,
Creation outside of professional routines and practices.
With these characteristics from UGC, in the meantime, with the advance of
Internet, user-generated content began to show its values in variety aspects.
For example, there are visible benefits from user-generated content, like in
news reporting. Nowadays, owing to user-generated content online becoming
popular, ‘citizen journalism’ is a common phenomenon. In recent years, a
number of big news organizations like in BBC and CNN, user-generated
content have been used to supply the area which cannot be collected by
traditional journalism gathering system, in specific, like they giving rights to
internet users submitting photos, videos and updates on breaking news. In
short, the benefits are that as soon as incidents happened, the audiences
witnessing can post reports, photos or videos to the media on the Internet.
However, the advantages of UGC are massive, this is only a simple example
on the benefits from UGC, in economic perspective, UGC has the capacity to
influence purchase decisions, brand affinity and brand loyalty, which means it
has the ability to affect online economic value for commercial companies.
Under this situation, the study will explore the value of UGC in economy
aspect and whether the distribution of economic benefits from UGC is fair
enough.

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Whether Internet is unfair in economic perspective
With the advance of technical online services, Internet becomes a second
world in our daily life, creating online contents and receiving information from
web is a common stuff in Generation Y. To exploring whether Internet is unfair
to users in economic perspective, the following questions should be analysis
first: how Internet works in economic way; how about the distribution of profits;
what are users position in economy cycle online.
Since the beginning of the web, there are thousands of volunteers, hobbyists
and idealists have worked for the development of Internet. Thus, some
observers have described this phenomenon as a ‘gift economy for information
exchange’ (Barbrook, 2002). Apparently, Internet provides a simple,
convenience and fast way for information exchange. The module of economy
cycle online is about the exchange between user layer and commercial
company layer from content creation to data analysis. In user layer, the
activities are about content creation, interactive communication, information
received, while data collection and information analysis, marketing strategies
formulation in commercial company layer. When comes to the discussion
about economy value to all participants online, the most important thing is
about pointing out the fountainhead of economy cycle. Among the whole
process, online content should be a key to economic and the owner of it may
become the winner in this competition of benefits. Therefore, to be more
accurate, in this exchange, the way online content works reveals the way
Internet works in economy perspective.
Content online can be divided into UGC and non-UGC (professionally
generated content). According to a research from (Meeyoung, C., Haewoon,
K., Pablo, R., Yong-Yeol, A., and Sue, M., 2007), compared to non-UGC, UGC

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has more proportion in online content, and, a key characteristic of UGC is the
fast content production rate. There is a data from the research about the
unbelievable content number of UGC. It compared two famous video websites,
which is non-UGC, IMDb, the largest online movie database, carries 963,309
titles of movies and TV episodes produced since 1888 until today. In contrast,
the representative of UGC websites, YouTube, enjoys 65,000 daily new
uploads, which means that it only takes 15 days in YouTube to produce the
same number of videos as all IMDb movies.
From these data, it can be clearly seen that UGC should be the influence key
to online content, in other words, return to the perspective of this study,
economy, UGC plays a significant role in the decision on who get more
economic benefits from internet.
The form of user-generated content in virtual world seems to be a second
language to users. It provides a chance for users to speak freely in a public
sphere, in the meantime, offers a window for commercial companies observing
market online.
Whether these UGC content really worth money, the answer of this question is
obvious positive. The most obvious evidence is that companies willing paid for
the content users post online. Take Google purchase YouTube for $1.6 billion
as an example, YouTube is obviously only a platform for people sharing videos,
which may not valued for that large amount of money, however, in this trade,
Google company not only own the platform but also obtain the large database
from YouTube. Companies want to use their money more effectively which can
be seen as target marketing, in short, by analyzing users’ information and their
content, companies can improve their goods or services to obtain more
economic benefits. Thus, after Google purchase YouTube, they analysis user
data from it, then, YouTube had been re-cataloged its modules and with these

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changes it attract more Internet users to enjoy the platform. In a word, the
information that user supplied worth a lot of money to commercial companies.
There is another example from DataSift, DataSift signed an agreement with
twitter for buying its recent two years user-generated content. What makes
DataSift willing to pay such a mount of money buying gossips from Twitter
users? The reason is that the main service of DataSift is doing the excavation,
reorganization, and analysis of information from Twitter, after that,
comprehends real-time information from other social media platforms such as
Klout, PeerIndex and Facebook. By analysis these content, username,
followers, personal information and even position data from Twitter, getting
results about users’ behavior characteristic, tendency of interest. With these
results, DataSift can provide market guidance services for commercial
companies.
Both two cases indicated that Internet users’ content has a big value, however,
the interesting thing is that users enjoy create online content and they haven’t
realize the value of their contribution.
Furthermore, UGC is not only important to commercial companies but also has
a lot of meaning to users themselves as well. In Generation Y, create content
online seems to be a fashion, everyone enjoy the process to trigger a
discussion or share emotions. Additionally, in this age, users tend to consider
about others that including strangers’ advices. According to eMarketer, 65
percentage of users aged 18-24 considered information shared on social
networks when making a purchasing decision. There is about 2/3 of
consumers use search engines to help them research and make purchase
decisions (eConsultancy, 2013). It can be seen that, Generation Y have
integrated UGC into their day to day lives, making access to the opinions of
others easier than ever.

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Knowing user-generated content is significant to Millennials, marketers began
to align their strategies with the way users prefer to consider and execute
purchases. So there is a question about the way companies get user
information for economic value.
How commercial companies could access personal information and how they
use it? Companies gain economic benefits in a complicated way, the common
schedule is that companies get consumers’ user-generated contents first and
then analysis the data, after that, using the results to formulate their business
strategy.
Internet is an open area and personal information from this platform can be
collected by a variety of parties. What’s more, for some companies, data
collection is becoming a side business: companies track their Internet users,
organize that data and gain profiles from the information they develop. For
instance, Facebook utilizes users’ personal information to choose posting
pertinence advertisement on individuals’ pages. If a user comes into a certain
age group, has discussed movies, or posted about traveling, he or she should
see advertisements related to these topics. Take Amazon.com for another
example, which makes product suggestions to customers based on their past
purchases and/or searches. In both cases, Facebook and Amazon, they are
using information from their own websites and they have collected these data
to market to consumers.
Under the situation about user-generated content is important to both users
and commercial companies and they both rely on these content to continue
their online activities, it is so obvious that UGC can create economic profits
online, moreover, these profits were spectacular when come to exact money.
Here is a statistics from MYCUBE that trying to figure out how much do sites

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profited from UGC (Figure 1).
Figure 1
The info-graphic mentioned above indicated that a combined total of around
3.7 billion dollars are made from Twitter, LinkedIn, MySpace, YouTube and
Facebook from user-generated content. However, users do not received any
economic profits from these content, which means users being free labors in
this process.
However, from this view of UGC has a large percentage in sites profits, the
creation of UGC, in economic aspect, users seem to be as ‘working’ for
Internet. Nevertheless, users still can earn little money from Internet or even
commercial companies. For instance, Google is well known for its
unconventional labor contracts and its ‘geek culture’ that pays bonuses for
creative input and provides spare time for employees to spend on
non-assigned projects (José van Dijck, 2008). However, these paid content is
so less and have a strict condition limited, most of UGC is unpaid. Thus, under
this situation, Internet users seem as free labors to make contribution to

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Internet economy. According to Tiziana (2000), it ‘is a feature of the cultural
economy’.
However, while these users in the process of ‘working’ online, they enjoy their
creation as play. Douglas (1999) and Gillespie (2006) indicated that working
with media technologies has been the department of hobbyists since the time
of radio hams, and digital labor has acquired the image of being creative play.
Thus, under this statement, being as a free labor to Internet seems to be a
volunteer work for users, they may do not care about the economic value.
However, even though it is so obvious that Internet provide much convenience
to both Internet users and commercial companies and users enjoy the process
when they being ‘digital labors’, it can be seen as an unfair economy exchange
to Internet users, even they may not care. Typically, most content online
belongs to user-generated content while commercial companies always
playing the role to profit on user online activity by tracking their interests,
affiliations, and habits, through gathering and using information to create
economic interests. Even sometimes users can earn money from their creative
content, in the environment of Internet information area, commercial
companies still in the leader position.
Therefore, it comes to the question that who gains more economic benefits
from Internet, commercial company or individual users. The answer of this
question is the commercial company and the reason is that users doing unpaid
work online for creating content to support the running of economy cycle. In
term of the definition of economic value and the percentage of data users
provide to websites, it can be seen that users are in the weak position from
economy perspective, they created valuable content without awareness.

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Who run Internet exactly, from all the above, no one actually running it. The
Internet is not ‘run’ by any one person, group or organization. It might be better
to think of it as an entity that is governed by a number of different groups from
different backgrounds. Collectively, they work to develop standards and
policies to ensure the Internet is usable and appropriate globally. In other
words, Internet is like a platform that building a world just likes the reality one.
Commercial companies are not changing their responsibility while Internet
users played producer and consumer at the same time.
Back to the questions about whether Internet is fair in economic aspect, if we
said there is a fair relationship between customer and companies in the reality
world, the relationship must be unfair in cyber world. Because users have two
identities in cyber world that they both are producer and consumer, in the
meantime, they do not obtain any extra economic benefits from these invisible
contributions.
However, some users hold the idea that they received economy interest online.
It cannot be denied that with the advance of web 2.0 technologies, more and
more UGC sites appeared, it encouraged internet users participating into
producing activities more than consuming activities, during this period, users
be given more power over content because they add business value as well.
Standing on marketing and business perspective, hybrid terms such as
‘co-creation’ and ‘produsage’ are rapidly replacing the terms ‘consumption’ and
‘customization’ (Prahalad and Ramaswamy, 2004). According to media
analysts and business gurus, there is a new shift among digital platforms,
especially Internet, in the way companies approach their customers and go
about business relations:

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You can participate in the economy as an equal, co-creating value with your
peers and favorite companies to meet your very personal needs, to engage in
fulfilling communities, to change the world, or just to have fun! (Tapscott and
Williams, 2006)
However, before users can actually contribute to these commercial companies
by uploads or comments to a site, they usually have to register with their name,
email address and sometimes add more personal details such as gender, age,
nationality or income. Their subsequent media behavior can be detailed traced
by variety means. More importantly, all users of UGC sites provide information
without awareness because their IP addresses which platform owner can used
without limit. Furthermore, even it comes to permission that should users to
agree, the bottom line of agreement is that users have no power over data
distribution, which is means there is almost no rights for users to control the
use of their information. However, in the information era, losing the control of
content means losing the position in online platform.
All in all, under the situation above, what we cannot deny is that Internet is a
platform for exchange, however, in economy perspective, it exits in an unfair
way to users.
Methodology
The purpose of this research is to examine the exploitation and consumer
power on the platform of Internet in economic aspect and analysis the reaction
of users after pointing out their value and things they ignored in daily life
through case study.
In this section, I will describe the methodology used in this research and
explain the design of case study, additionally, provide an explanation of data

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analysis.
Research methodology
Researchers have long debated the relative value of qualitative and
quantitative inquiry (Patton, 1990). Qualitative research uses a naturalistic
approach that seeks to understand phenomena in context-specific settings.
While quantitative research uses experimental methods and quantitative
measures to test hypothetical generalizations. (Marie C. Hoepfl, 1997)
However, qualitative research aims to gather an in-depth understanding of
human behavior and the reasons that govern such behavior. Additionally, the
qualitative method emphasizes the why and how of a question or phenomena,
not just using numbers to represent of what, where and when as quantitative
research.
In this study, the main discussion is about users’ reaction when engaging a
different view of Internet from economic perspective. The data will be analysis
is about their feelings before and after knowing what happened online,
moreover, their opinions on ‘whether internet is unfair’. In this case, an open
answer will contribute to the research and the reactions may be difficult to
convey quantitatively, which means quantitative research method maybe not
suitable enough to reach the request. Hence, a qualitative research
methodology was used for this study.
Qualitative research, broadly defined, means ‘any kind of research that
produces findings not arrived at by means of statistical procedures or other
means of quantification’ (Strauss and Corbin, 1990). There are several
considerations suitable to adopt a qualitative research methodology. Strauss
and Corbin (1990) claim that qualitative methods can be used to better
understand any phenomenon about which little is yet known or gain new

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perspectives on things that already known, or to gain more in-depth
information. Thus, using qualitative methods may help this study identify
variables vision from the same situation, moreover, participants could describe
or interpret the situation they experienced before and compared with the
website I will show to them.
There are many research method belong to qualitative methodology, the main
methods employed in qualitative research are observation, interviews, case
study and documentary analysis (Nick, P., 2006). Among these methods,
interviews are suitable for discovery of information about experience from
participants. Interview questions tend to be framed as open-ended questions
that will support discovery of new information. Furthermore, ‘If you want people
to understand better than they otherwise might, provide them information in
the form in which they usually experience it’ (Lincoln and Guba, 1985). It can
be know from Lincoln and Guba that the information from qualitative research
is not only from the researchers’ perspective, but also from participants’
perspective as well. What researcher can do is only guiding the questions and
cannot restrict the answer. Therefore, the reports from qualitative research
typically rich with detail and insights into participants' experiences of the
situation, ‘may be epistemologically in harmony with the reader's experience’
(Stake, 1978) and thus more meaningful.
Based on the research questions and case study I supposed to use, interview
will be chosen to analysis users’ experience from both before and after receive
information from case study. In the following, I will explain the design of case
study and interview.

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Design of case study and interview
Case study
Case study is a form of qualitative research methodology that is used to collect
descriptive data through individuals, a small group of participants. Meanwhile,
Siggelkow (2007) argues that a single case analysis can be a very powerful
example and can be used to fill in the gaps in existing theories. Furthermore,
Thomas (2011) offers a definition of case study as follows.
‘Case studies are analyses of persons, events, decisions, periods, projects, policies,
institutions, or other systems that are studied holistically by one or more methods. The case
that is the subject of the inquiry will be an instance of a class of phenomena that provides an
analytical frame, an object, within which the study is conducted and which the case illuminates
and explicates.’
Therefore, using a case study for analyzing users’ reaction after they realize
their economic value is suitable for this research.
The case in this study is a website that I designed by myself. The purpose of
the website is showing people the process of Internet, the policy they ignored
and the value of UGC in the perspective of economic benefits. In another
words, pointing out how much contribution Internet users has made in online
activities. The website demonstrates information about the exploitation of
user-generated content and its value to commercial companies in interesting,
interactive and entertaining ways. Moreover, the idea is to make users think
differently about the value of their contributions and all the statements in the
website is based on the above research about whether Internet is unfair.

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In this project, three sections have been designed to refresh users visions of
Internet，respectively are videos about the process of internet, introduction
games in UGC’s value and description of privacy policy.
The section of videos tries to represent the process of Internet and the
purpose of this section is to provide a deep introduction of Internet to users. In
those videos, the following contents have been mentioned: the creation of
online content, the translation between content and code, the database of
Internet, the process of data organized and the analysis of online
information(Figure 2).
Figure 2
The section of introduction about users their value to websites is using an
interactive form. Additionally, these value in this part come from ‘Backupify
Social Data Value Infographic’ (figure 3-4), which adopted a roundabout way
by building off some publicly available information to figure out what social
data, which social media companies, and what social media actions are the
most valuable.

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Figure 3
Figure 4
In this participate part, the website will simulate a social networking life for
users, users will be guided to choose a website they prefer and then they will
experienced steps about being a number of the one they chose like sign up
and publish their thoughts. However, in this period of time, after they finished
fill in information or click button for submit, the economic value of the content
they just created will be showed into exact money. Because of exact numbers
are more easily to stimulate people thinking, with the numbers of value, the
purpose of this part is making users rethink about what they contributed before.
(Figure 5)

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Figure 5
The section of privacy policy provides significant information that users ignored
in their daily surfing life like the privacy policy from social media and some
other websites. Take privacy policy from Facebook for example, when the first
time a users sign up for his or her Facebook, there is a line below says ‘By
clicking Sign Up, you agree to our Terms and that you have read our Data use
policy, including our Cookie Use’, which is always ignored by users. However,
what exactly in the policy? In data use policy, it explicitly point out that the
information they received about users and how they use the information they
receive. Thus, in the website, some content from the policy that users ignored
were highlight like ‘ we use the information we receive about you in connection
with the services and …the advertisers that purchase ads on the site and
developers…’(Figure 6)

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Figure 6
From this policy, it can be seen that users’ information can turn into economic
profiles by shared with social media’s working partners. In daily life, most of
users do not reading the policy that website provide to them. When coming to
sign up for website, most of Internet users just click the box below to agree
with the policy without read it. In this section, specific rules showing for remind
users about what they had missed when given out information.
The purpose of designing this website is to be a case for helping the study to
collect data from users reaction on receiving a different view of Internet in
economic aspect. Furthermore, I want to using this website to refresh people's
thoughts about Internet and let them notice their position in the platform of
Internet.
Interview
Interview is a form of qualitative methodology that can be referred as
conversations between two or more people where the interviewer asks
questions to the interviewee to obtain information. It is an important tool used

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to depict the story behind the interviewees’ experiences (McNamara, 1999).
Owning to interviews are particularly useful for getting the story behind a
participant's experiences, it provided interviewer a chance to pursue in-depth
information around a topic. In this study, the topic will be around whether
Internet is fair to users in economic perspective.
In this study, participants will be asked to have a short interview and talking
about their opinions on this study in both before and after using website.
Because of open content of interview will have more research value, the form
of interview will be use semi-open interview, which interviewees will be asked
specific core questions and the purpose is exploring in-depth information and
interviewees are allowed broad freedom of expression and elaboration. During
this period, the conversation will be record into text for analysis.
There are 12 interviewees who come from different country, university and
major but in the same age group (18-25) that is in Generation Y. Even though
the age group is limited, the different backgrounds provide a variety and
interesting research. All of them are agreed about using our conversation in
this research. (More information can be seen in appendices)
In the interview, the design of questions were divided into two main sections
that are before and after using website. The main questions will be explored
before using websites is about users’ cyber life, understanding of UGC, the
value of content they created, their relationship with commercial companies
and opinions about information security. The after part of interview was
exploring the changes after users receiving information in different vision of
Internet. Additionally, whether Internet is unfair will be asked in the last
questions of interview.

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Research in users’ understanding of UGC and position online
Before case study
Before interviewees using website, they will be asked some questions about
their understanding of UGC and their position in online economy cycle. In this
part, the answers were all based on participants’ own experience before and it
reflected the truly understanding from Internet users. Only fewer participants
know what is UGC exactly and showed a positive attitude to create content
online. Most of interviewees need the explanation of UGC, even they know the
definition of content they generated online, they can hardly had a vision in
what they have contributed to internet. Thus, all of interviewees have created
online content more or less but almost everyone did not know it worth money.
As following, it is a typical example on the understanding of UGC from users.

Q: Have you released any information or created any content, after accessing to the Internet?
A: I think I have not created any information myself.
(After giving the detail conception about publishing information)
Yes, I have. I often forward some breaking news and interesting jokes posted by others, cause
I think it is convenient for me to share with my friends; simultaneously I can keep the
information that I am interested as my favour, so that I can read it later.
(Interview from Xiaolong Zheng, 24, Chinese, MSc Management and Finance, University of
Sussex)
When it comes to the questions about economic value of content, most of the
participants were hardly in giving an answer to it, most of them never thought
about the value of content in economic way. They were just like the idea of
working as play, which from Douglas(1999) and Gillespie(2006), they enjoy the
process in creating content and seeing this as play, in other word, economic

25
benefits are not their motivation in cyber world. In Evangeline1
’s interview, she
mentioned that she thought create content and sharing it to other people online
is a happy thing and she did not think about the money refund, what she
expect is the responses from other Internet users. From her interview, it was
clearly showing the motivation of online content creation from general Internet
users. Besides money, the Internet users preferred to interactive content
communication with others online. Because of their understanding about
content that users generated, the question of the relationship between users
online and commercial company making interviewees confused became
reasonable. Xiaolong2
said the relationship might be only the normal business
relationship between consumer and producer. In the meantime, Shanshan3
hold the similar idea and given the answer like their relationship ‘basically the
same as in the real world’.
When considering the online private security problem, it was about half of the
interviewees said they did not worried about it and mentioned the idea about
the believable website. In Roda4
’s interview, he said that he think in today’s
cyber world, websites were believable than before and he mentioned that
everything he given out online is not so private that he should worried. This is a
kind of ‘volunteer sharing’ (Linda, C., 2011), Linda also mentioned that with too
many and too often clicks through permission requests and privacy policies
without thinking, Internet users use to ignore the impact of their privacy.
However, in this question, the other half of participants who said they have
trust problem in online private security had mentioned about bank account
security and private information on social networking. Most of them said they
would never given out their bank details to unsure websites. For Chang5
’s
interview, he mentioned the topic about personal data protection, he take an

1 Evangeline Lai, 23, Chinese, MBA, New York Institute of Technology (Interview at 2013/8/3)
2 Xiaolong Zheng, 24, Chinese, MSc Management and Finance, University of Sussex (Interview at 2013/8/1)
3 Shanshan Jiang, 21, Chinese, BA Bank and finance, University of Sussex (interview at 2013/8/4)
4 Roda Haidar, 22, French, BA Mechanical Engineer, UCL (Interview at 2013/8/3)
5 Chang Jiang, 24, Chinese, MA digital media, University of Sussex (Interview at 2013/8/3)

26
example to explain why he cannot trust Internet now. He said that he thought
internet is an amazing technic platform and he only given out the personal
information to the web which has data protection techniques like login or
privacy setting system, however, sometimes he still can receive
advertisements from unknown senders, and the most scaring thing to him is
that when he searched some items online and the advertisements about it
were appeared everywhere on different web pages. ‘The ads like a ghost
watching you, following you everywhere, it was horrible.’
After case study
After showing website to these interviewees, explaining what exactly
happened in Internet and showing them things that they maybe ignored when
they surfing online, their responds were different and have a great value to the
research.
Based on the description of how user-generated content works in Internet from
an economic vision, coming to the questions about UGC, most interviewees
said that they haven’t realized these content they generated working in such
way. The brand new thing for them is about the place contents went to after
they created. Some of interviewees said that they never thought about the big
database and professional analyzed contents. However, most of them felt this
process is reasonable and can help the development of Internet in a right way.
During this stage, some of users also mentioned that they do not care about
the economic value about their information being sold in the process, in other
vision, they hold the idea about they gain other benefits from internet as well,
like after their information be analyzed they can get useful information or
service more directly from companies. There also has the comment like
everything should be paid and Internet is a platform which providing

27
convenience life for public, internet users must contribute to these commercial
companies which support the running of internet.
Take Saori6
’s interview for example, after she saw videos from website, she
had a big reaction to the process of Internet working. She said that ‘ I never
thought it before’. In her imagination, firstly, the content users created on social
media like Facebook was just an expression for self-emotion and do not have
an economic value, secondly, information given out for sign up specific website
is only can use by user themselves and do not sale to other companies.
Additionally, she said she never thought there are surveillances in Internet by
commercial companies or other parties.
In the meantime, there is about five of participants mentioned that they notice
the surveillance online but still surprise about the way that commercial
companies gathering the information. What does not surprise for them was the
way companies using these information, and almost every interviewees said
that they did not care about their information were analysis for companies’
business strategy and even some of participants said they were glad that their
information can help those companies improve the marketing.
Even the process of how user-generated content turn into economic value
gives most of participants surprise, they still hold the idea that this model
supply users other benefits, such as individual shopping advices or improved
items, which is good for the revolve of Internet. Thus, it can be seen that
participant culture (José van Dijck, 2008) has a rapid development among
cyber world, users are enjoy the process of create content online.

6 Saori Somekawa, 22, Japanese, BA International communication, Kyoto Sangyo University (Interview at
2013/8/6)

28
When it comes to the questions about the position of UGC and participants
themselves, interviewees had different opinions. Some of them thought that
they were at a high position first, cause they saw users were producer in the
process but after known the exact money and the private policy, they have
changed the idea.
Take Yang7
for example, he said that he felt ok when he saw the process and
glad to participant in helping companies for marketing improvement but when
he reached the price of each words or sentence he made, he came up the idea
that it is unfair. He talked about the idea that he needs to protect personal
information in the future. He agreed with that analysis will improve the market
in a right way but he can hardly accept the collections way companies do.
Companies giving users flexible space to create and exchange content online,
at the meantime, users get a sense of being the owner of Internet. Commercial
companies use their sense to let them being the free labor to create interests.
However, the truth is that some users live in the virtual world that companies
created. They cannot see it clearly and being free labor for a long time, like
Charlie8
, in his interview, he mentioned that, he thought users were being a
kind of leader on Internet before because there are always some hot debate
can be stirred up by the Internet users. However, when he saw the exact
numbers of money for his content, he was surprise at the first time and then a
conflicted emotion came out and he began to think about the contribution he
has done. But he said that he just surprised the content worth such money, he
does not care about whether this money belongs to him cause he already
experienced a sense of achievement. In term of his interview, it can be seen
that commercial companies using this psyche motivation from consumers to
push them create content, which is as ‘participant culture’ (José van Dijck,

7 Yang Zhang, 23, Chinese, MA Telecommunication, Michigan State University (Interviewed at 2013/8/6)
8 Charlie Chen, 23, Chinese, MA Digital media, University of Sussex (Interviewed at 2013/8/5)

29
2008) and ‘volunteer sharing’ (Linda, C., 2011) mentioned before.
There are also participants said they were surprise about the value of
information but they can accept the use of the information and it is ok to trade
their information under the law.
Take Haoxin9
for example, she said that, ‘ it seems we were be exploited from
the commercial companies, but we still cannot do anything, in this situation,
maybe the best thing we can do is to accept and have fun with it.’ Her words
was exactly indicated the mental state of ‘digital labor’, the free labor of
Internet.
Through analyzing reactions from participants, the answer of ‘does Internet
users know Internet exactly?’ is obviously negative. In most of the time, users
just use Internet as a platform they can have free speak and gathering
information they need, they do not care about the process inside Internet and
do not realize they are being ‘free labor’ in the process of building the cyber
world economy circle.
Internet users play a role named ‘digital labor’, in book ‘Digital Labor: The
Internet as Playground and Factory’, Scholz (2013) indicated that on the
Internet there are besides traditional wage labor irregular forms of labor that
are not paid, moreover, at the same time he pointed out that these digital labor
activities do not ‘feel, look, or smell like labor at all’. It can be seen that when
users having fun in online activity, they are making contribution to the Internet
all the time, more specifically, they contribute to commercial companies.

9 Haoxin Wang, 22, Chinese, MSc Informatics, RMIT University (Interviewed at 2013/8/5)

30
When it comes to private policy, participants were answered questions like
‘Have you seen these policy before’ and ‘how do you feel when you see these
policy now’. In this interview, no one said they have read the policy before sign
up social media or other websites. When asked why they do not read policy,
the reason they given out was that they thought the policy is a protection for
users and all the people who signed up social media or other websites do not
have any problem, so they thought there is no risk in it. However, when they
known about how the policy works, they began to complain the policy, they
thought it was a kind of robber. In the meantime, participants said that they
think the website should giving an option for users to choose if they agreed to
share their information with some companies. Take Shan10
for example, he
said that ‘ It gives us no choice to share our information. Even though it is no
risk for our personal profiles, I still feeling weird to find the truth.’ When I asked
for if he would read these before sign up, he said never, cause it is too long
and he think there must be some boring law sentences. After he knows it now,
he said he might read the policy next time.
It was so obvious that people do not care about these policy content before
they know what is inside, however, they have no choice to change the situation
about the content, furthermore, even they known it, they will not chose to read
it as well because of they think their personal information is fine online and the
policy protect them more or less.
Nowadays, privacy is a hot issue when it comes to any aspect of online activity.
However the concept of privacy has existed for hundreds of years, lots of
people just have a lower understanding of it. Indeed, in Magna Carta11
, which
has the first definitions of the rights of the individual in history, there is no
mention of privacy. At that time, personal information had little value. With the

10 Shan Wang, 25, Chinese, MSc Computing with digital media, University of Sussex (Interviewed 2013/8/5)
11 Magna Carta (Latin for Great Charter),[1] also called Magna Carta Libertatum or The Great Charter of the
Liberties of England, is an Angevin charter originally issued in Latin in the year 1215

31
development of business, fierce competitions between companies appear,
thus, the value of personal information began to increase and with it the need
for privacy. Meanwhile, with the advent of the Internet, with its facility of global
instant access to information at virtually costless, companies can put
advertisements on individual pages directly. Additionally, by analyzing personal
information, companies can improve their individuation service and helpful to
set down business strategies. The value of personal data increased in these
years, especially in economic aspect. Public began to worry about their rights
online, for this reason, companies and websites began to claim privacy policy
to public.
Generally, there are many fundamental authentication, policy statements and
data protection techniques like logins, user-driven privacy settings for
protecting our privacy online by service providers (Steven Furnell and Andy
Phippen, 2012). The service provider will usually clearly propose about how
users’ data is used and how it is protected in publication of the privacy policy.
However, privacy policies often comes in for criticism for being too verbose
and complex to truly allow users to know their rights while using the service. In
today’s cyber world, all of the sites have policies on their home pages, so
users have the chance to read them before they login of sign-up. However,
while all sites have the clear links to privacy policy, this does not mean that
users will read and understand them.
Based on the research I have done before, the statement is that Internet is
unfair in the economic perspective. Thus, the suspect I made for this interview
is about after users knowing the contribution they made for Internet, they will
realize there is an unfair exchange in economic perspective. However,
according to the interview, the result is different from suspect before. Getting
economic benefits are not the motivation for users surfing online, under this
situation, users do not care about the value of contents they generated. They

32
willing to create content online and enjoy changing economic value into other
service, from the interview, it can be seen that they think this trade is fair
enough. Compared to the value of UGC, users were more care about their
personal information security. Even so, the economic benefits from the
personal data are not the point of ‘unfair’ for them, what they considered was
the right online. Therefore, in terms of case study and interview, the conclusion
is that even Internet is unfair in economic perspective, there are many other
benefits it provided to users, from overall situation, Internet is a fair platform.
Conclusion
With the advance of Internet technologies, user generated content sites jump
into the main stage of Internet, in the mean time, changing people’s daily life.
Online users change their identities to be as producers and consumers at the
same time.
In this study, it used the quantitative research methodology to explore
exploitation and consumer power in economic aspect. The data analyzed in
the research collected from designed case study and interview. However, this
research is not a comprehensive one, which has many unconsidered aspects
as follows: firstly, the statement about ‘internet is unfair’ refer to the economic
benefits online which can not extend to other aspect of internet; secondly, in
the research, there were many words or phrases has limited definition which
may narrow down the result of research; thirdly, the interview data is only from
age group 18-25, even this study concentrated on Generation Y, which still
limited stand for whole internet users; fourthly, most of the interviewees are
Chinese which might influent the accuracy of result. In a word, this research is
not consummate enough, which could be exploring more in the future.

33
The main research is about exploring exportation and consumer power in this
study and it analysis through the reaction of Internet users realizing the real
process of Internet in economy aspect.
Through analyzing content and current situation, there is a statements about
Internet is not fair enough to users in economic perspective, users are being
‘digital labors’ in contributing to online economy cycle. Users do invisible
contribution to commercial companies all the time like in the process of their
online social life, even an emotion message may has a big value to companies.
The most obvious use of information from users is that different
advertisements appear on side bar at individual pages. The style and demand
of advertisements were analysis through users information post online by
commercial companies, by tracking their cookies or IP address,
advertisements were post on individual pages.
However, interviews of this study provide a new vision for the understanding of
Internet, the main motivation to users is not in economic benefits. In terms of
users reactions, it can be seen that users enjoy the feeling to contribute for the
Internet and do not care about their content are using in other place not only
for their enjoying. In users’ vision, maybe Internet is unfair in economic
perspective but that is not what they concern about. They achieve other
benefits via Internet platform and they do not care about making contribution to
commercial companies, they enjoy the process of creation content and sharing
with others. Through interview, it can be clearly seen that compared with
sharing economic benefits with commercial companies, users preferred to
consider more about their other experiences online like communication and
individual advices.

34
From the research, user obvious in the weak position when it comes to
economic benefits, however, economic value is not the motivation for Internet
users creating contents online. All in all, Internet is only unfair in economic
perspective and it is still a fair platform in whole situation.

35
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