Insights from digital content creators; understanding their intentions, practices and challenges

UNESCO has published interesting research into content creators' information sharing practices. 500 adult content creators from around the worldanswered a questionnaire (in 8 languages) and 20 people were interviewed ("qualified UNESCO contacts, or members of professional journalist organisations who also filled out the survey). Content creators are defined "as individuals who regularly post content online for public consumption and have more than 1,000 followers". This is part of UNESCO's strategy of developing influencers' Media and Information Literacy.
Some findings are:
- "‘popularity’ – measured by the number of likes and views - is the most common indicator of credibility for online sources (42%)." Second most common was judging through the endorsement by people the content creators trusted.
- Motivation to create content: Most popular were sharing knowledge with others (26%); earning income (23.8%); entertaining others (23.4%).
- 62% did not verify accuracy of information before sharing it
- Where the content creators sources information: Personal experience/encounter was the most frequent at 58.1%. Mainstream news media ties with online non-mainstream media sources as the third most common source at. They mostly don't use official sources
- About 85% do not belong to any creators’ association.If they do, the most common are Online Creators Association (17.2%), DigitalCreators Association (15.6%), Web Content Creators Association (13.4%) and International Content Creator Association for Social Media (13.4%). I must say that I wasn't aware of any of these! As a content creator (since I do have nearly 2000 followers on X, at least at the moment...) perhaps I should join one!
Reference: Ha, L. (2024). Behind the screens: insights from digital content creators; understanding their intentions, practices and challenges. UNESCO. https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000392006