User-generated content (UGC), also known as consumer-generated media (CGM) or user-created content (UCC), refers to various kinds of media content, publicly available, that are produced by end-users. The notion of free content has been central to the media sector for decades. Consumers have been willing to receive free content, via commercial radio and television broadcasts, in exchange for advertising.

The rise of the Internet in the 1990s was accompanied by a new debate on free content that was played out through experimentation with all forms of content, including business material that had previously been charged at thousands of dollars per document. The continued, more vertiginous rise of the Internet this decade has also seen experimentation with free content models, but with one major change. As well as professionally produced material being offered free, the public has also been allowed, indeed encouraged, to make its content available to everyone.

The term user generated content entered mainstream usage during 2005 having arisen in web publishing and new media content production circles. Its use for a wide range of applications including problem processing, news, gossip and research reflects the expansion of media production through new technologies that are accessible and affordable to the general public. All digital media technologies are included, such as question-answer databases, digital video, blogging, podcasting, mobile phone photography and wikis.

In addition to these technologies, user generated content may also employ a combination of open source, free software, and flexible licensing or related agreements to further reduce the barriers to collaboration, skill-building and discovery.

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