New perspective on UGC, PGC, and OGC: motivating factors of Chinese co-creators’ engagement with international television series

Abstract

This paper locates audience engagement in the act of content creation and considers the levels of engagement that content creation could engender. It explicates the different types of content creators defined in the literature and examines motivating factors for the production of content in a Chinese context. It argues that while some content creators seek to draw attention to the series they support, in other cases the engagement with the international television series is not fully motivated by a desire to interact with the international content and direct audiences to it. Rather, content creators are motivated by a desire to gain exposure for their own craft or to develop transferable skills that help them move between the different categories of content creators. In doing so, we argue that international series can tap into these ‘cultural intermediaries’ (Hutchinson 2017).