Explore the Development Trend and Problems of Social Media from

the Evolution Process of Content Creation

Yanlin Sun

Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, Beijing Normal University, Hong Kong Baptist University,

United International College, Zhuhai, Guangdong, 519000, China

Keywords: Internet, Social Media, Content Creation Mode, User-Generated Content.

Abstract: The evolution of content creation mode from Professional Generated Content (PGC) to User-Generated

Content (UGC), and then to Artificial Intelligence-Generated Content (AIGC), profoundly shows the

influence of technological progress and social development on content creation and communication. However,

in the development of content creation models, there are still deficiencies in the ability to process information

in social media. This article discusses the evolution logic of content creation mode and analyzes its impact on

the development of social media platform and user interaction. Based on this, this article proposes specific

suggestions to strengthen information screening, content supervision and creator rights protection, to promote

the development of content creation and dissemination on social media platforms and the optimization of

digital content.

1 INTRODUCTION

In recent years, social media has become an important

part of people's daily life. With the continuous

development of the Internet, science and technology,

online media is also evolving. From static web pages

in the original Web 1.0 era to interactive platforms in

the web 2.0 era, and from Professional Generated

Content (PGC) to User-Generated Content (UGC),

the Internet has gradually changed from information

consumption to content creation (O'reilly, 2007).

Users have changed from simple social media users

and consumers to content creators. In particular, the

extensive use of UGC on social media platforms has

made the creative content on social media more

diversified and promoted the rapid development of

social media. However, the growth of social media

has also brought many problems. While encouraging

users to create content, it will lead to problems such

as information overload and the spread of false

information.

Although there has been a lot of research on social

media content creation, especially the discussion on

the impact of UGC on social media content, the

research on social media content creation in the

current stage tends to focus on a certain platform, and

there is little complete analysis of its evolution. With

the continuous development of social media and

platformization, artificial intelligence has gradually

become popular and gradually integrated into the

content creation of social media, bringing richer ways

for the content creation of social media. These new

creation technologies and models can change the

interaction between users and platforms and bring

new challenges to social media.

Studying the evolution of content creation in

social media is important for understanding the future

development of social media. The integration of AI

and other technologies has changed the way content

is produced and disseminated, making social media

content creation more diversified. By analyzing these

changes, this article helps reveal the development

trends and challenges faced by social media in the

evolution of content creation.

Sun, Y.

Explore the Development Trend and Problems of Social Media from the Evolution Process of Content Creation.

DOI: 10.5220/0013985500004916

Paper published under CC license (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)

In Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on Public Relations and Media Communication (PRMC 2025), pages 38-43

ISBN: 978-989-758-778-8

2 THE IMPLICATIONS OF

CONTENT CREATION

EVOLUTION FOR SOCIAL

MEDIA DEVELOPMENT

2.1 From PGC to UGC -- User

Engagement Increases

With the development of Internet technology and the

popularization of social media, the content production

mode has experienced an important transformation

from professional content production to user content

production and then to artificial intelligence content

production. This shift could not only change the way

content is produced, but also greatly increase user

engagement and shape new models of digital

interaction. Users are no longer simple media users,

but also become media content creators. Professional

Generated Content (PGC) refers to the content

produced by professional teams or organizations,

which usually has high production standards and

commercial goals. The content created is professional

and unified, and usually appears in news reports and

television production of traditional media. There are

two main sources of PGC content: content purchased

from third parties or produced by websites (Gilardi &

Lam, 2024). In the process of PGC production, more

professional standards are adopted. This content

production mode emphasizes the control of quality

but lacks the independent creation ability of users. In

this mode, users are usually passive content

recipients. But with the continuous development of

technology, there is a dynamic change between the

roles of media producer and consumer. Jenkins

mentioned that the emergence of media convergence

can show the relationship between new media and old

media, and the complex interaction caused by the

emergence of new media has contributed to the

transformation of media consumers from passive to

content creators (Jenkins, 2006). The rise of UGC

mode benefits from the popularization of digital

technology and the openness of the platform

(Kaplan& Haenlein, 2010). As an open Content

production mode, UGC provides platforms for

ordinary users to create and share content, which

greatly improves users' participation in platforms.

Technology drives the development trend of UGC.

Easy-to-use content creation tools enable users to

participate in content creation without professional

knowledge or skills, lowering the threshold of content

creation and providing opportunities for ordinary

users to create content. The creation of UGC content

meets users' needs for self-expression through free

creation space and open social media environment, so

that users can express themselves and publish and

disseminate their created content on social media

platforms. Moreover, interactive features in UGC

platforms, such as comments and likes, are key to

increasing user engagement. UGC can prompt users

to post their favorite and interested topics. Through

the comment and like function, user-generated

content can be recognized on social media platforms,

forming communication communities, and enabling

users to find a sense of belonging and identity on the

platform. This kind of interaction not only enhances

the influence of user content, but also promotes the

emotional connection between users and encourages

users to participate more deeply in the creation and

dissemination of content.

2.2 From UGC to AIGC--Development

and Convergence of Technologies

With the continuous advancement of artificial

intelligence technology, the field of content

production is undergoing a profound transformation.

The transformation from User-Generated Content to

AI-generated content can reflect the leapfrog

development of content production mode driven by

the Internet and digital technology. As the core mode

of content production in the Internet era, UGC is

mainly characterized by the free creation and sharing

of content by users, which makes content creation

more diversified and enhances users' sense of

participation and social interaction. However, the

UGC model also faces some significant limitations.

Users need to invest a lot of time and energy to

produce content, and it takes a long period to process

and run the content during content creation, so users'

motivation and continuity of creation will be limited

(Kaplan & Haenlein, 2010). However, these

limitations provide a good opportunity for the rise of

AIGC, and the application of artificial intelligence

technology in the field of content generation can

make up for the vacancy of UGC. In 2014,

Goodfellow et al. proposed that Generative

Adversarial Network (GAN) had become an

important basis for AIGC in the field of image and

video generation (Goodfellow et al., 2014). The

integration of technology can not only help improve

the efficiency of content production but also provide

users with a new creative experience. However,

AIGC cannot completely replace UGC. These two

modes are mutually integrated and complement each

other. A good integration of these two content

creation modes can provide more possibilities for

content creation. AIGC tools can provide users with

Explore the Development Trend and Problems of Social Media from the Evolution Process of Content Creation

creative references or material support. For example,

generative AI, such as Chat GPT, can provide users

with creative ideas, greatly improve content

production efficiency, and reduce the time cost of

content creation. Image generation tools can generate

personalized pictures based on descriptions,

improving the quality and efficiency of UGC.

Moreover, with the continuous development of

technology, the algorithm technology of artificial

intelligence is constantly enhanced. According to the

user's behavior data and preferences, the algorithm

enables AIGC to generate personalized content for

users to meet their personalized needs. From UGC to

AIGC, the development and integration of technology

mark a revolutionary transformation of content

production mode. UGC enriches content creation by

stimulating users' enthusiasm for creation, while the

rise of AIGC improves the efficiency and quality of

content production through Internet development and

digital technology empowerment.

The transformation of content creation from PGC

to UGC and then to AIGC is not only the result of

technological development, but also reflects the

continuous progress and development of society. This

process can reflect the gradual change of the

information society and people's continuous pursuit

of freedom and innovation in content creation.

However, the transformation of creation mode in

social media platforms also brings many problems

and challenges. The development of UGC has limited

PGC content to some extent. Although the emergence

of UGC mode improves users' engagement on social

media, it also causes a series of problems of

information overload and the decline of transmitted

content. And in content creation, the continuous

development of AIGC will lead to a flood of

information, because AIGC's content creation

threshold is low and content generation speed is fast.

At the same time, AIGC weakens the dominance of

human creativity in the traditional UGC mode to

some extent. UGC provides initiative for users to

create, but when users provide creative ideas through

AI, users' inspiration for content creation will be

limited, which may lead to content duplication and

cause users to question the authenticity of content.

3 PROBLEMS AND

CHALLENGES IN THE

DEVELOPMENT OF SOCIAL

MEDIA

3.1 Information Overload and Content

Quality Degradation

Information overload refers to the phenomenon that

users feel information overload when facing a large

amount of information, because it is difficult to

process or filter the information useful to them. With

the growth of social media and the transformation of

content production models, this problem has become

more and more prominent. The wide application of

UGC and AIGC and other content production modes

has significantly improved the speed of information

generation and dissemination, but it also leads to

problems such as uneven content quality and

excessive repeated content. First, information

overload will directly affect users' decision-making

ability and experience quality. According to Herbert

Simon's bounded rationality theory, the amount of

information humans can process when making

decisions is very limited (Simon, 1997). Therefore,

when the amount of information exceeds the user's

own processing capacity, the user may feel very

confused and confused because of the inability to

effectively filter the content. Especially on social

media platforms, information is updated very fast,

and thousands of messages will pop up in a short

period. This explosive information will reduce users'

perception and recognition ability of content, thus

making them suffer from information fatigue and

reducing effective information acquisition. Second,

information overload is usually accompanied by the

problem of declining content quality. In UGC mode,

user-generated content usually lacks professionalism,

and repeated content or low-value information

emerges in large numbers, which is exacerbated to

some extent by the popularity of AIGC. As AIGC

technology can generate a large amount of content at

low cost, many users may over-rely on algorithms to

produce content. Although the content generated by

AIGC can meet users' immediate needs in form, AI

has fixed algorithm mode and data, and the generated

content lacks originality and depth, and often the

generated content is of low quality.

PRMC 2025 - International Conference on Public Relations and Media Communication

3.2 Difficulty of Content Supervision

and Spread of False Information

The World Wide Web is a favorable environment for

the mass dissemination of unsubstantiated rumors

(Del Vicario et al., 2016). With the rapid development

of social media platforms and artificial intelligence-

generated content (AIGC) technology, the difficulty

of content supervision is increasing, and the spread of

false information is becoming more and more serious.

AIGC technology can generate a large amount of

content efficiently and at low cost, thus lowering the

threshold to produce false information. In addition,

AI can imitate and learn human language, and much

of the content generated is often very confusing,

which is difficult to distinguish between true and false

information in social media networks, making it

difficult to identify and suppress false information in

social media networks.

AIGC technology exacerbated the explosive

growth of information volume and brought great

pressure to platform content regulation. Traditional

manual review information is difficult to cope with

such a massive amount of information flow, and

relying on algorithms for content review also has

obvious shortcomings. AI moderation systems often

struggle to understand complex contexts because AI

has trouble understanding the emotion of content as

humans do, which can lead to misjudgments. For

instance, disinformation may bypass the moderation

mechanism using suggestive language, image

mosaicking, or semantic ambiguity, which further

increases the difficulty of supervision (Gorwa et al.,

2020). Second, false information spreads extremely

fast on social media. False information is often more

likely to attract users' attention than real information

because its content is usually more emotional and

novel, which will attract users more and promote the

spread of false information (Vosoughi et al., 2018).

Users unwittingly expand the spread of false

information through reposts, likes, and comments due

to their lack of discrimination or intention. In

addition, while pursuing user engagement, the

recommendation algorithm will give priority to the

content that users are interested in according to their

preferences.

3.3 Protection of Content Creators'

Rights and Interests

With the popularization and development of UGC

and AIGC technology, the protection of the rights and

interests of content creators has also become a topic

of concern. In the context of the rapid development of

the Internet, creators' intellectual property rights,

creative freedom and income from creation are all

facing challenges.

First, insufficient protection of intellectual

property rights is one of the core problems of the

rights and interests of creators. In the UGC mode,

creators' original content is often subjected to

unauthorized reprinting, plagiarism, and even

commercial use, and the intellectual property rights

of creators are difficult to protect, creators themselves

often lack effective means of recourse and rights

protection, because there are too few ways and

support provided to them. With the development of

AIGC technology, this problem is more complicated.

Artificial intelligence can use a large amount of

public data to train imitate and generate new content,

but these training data may contain copyrighted

works, thus triggering the controversy of "secondary

infringement".

The freedom of creators to create content is also

limited to some extent. To avoid controversy or cater

to specific aesthetic tendencies, some content review

or recommendation mechanisms will restrict or block

certain types of content without reason, making it

difficult for creators' content to be spread and their

freedom of expression to be infringed. In addition, the

large-scale emergence of AI-generated content may

lead to the original works being submerged in many

repeated or templating content and the content created

by AIGC will be widely disseminated, but the original

content will be limited.

In addition, on social media platforms, creators

can generate revenue by creating content, but they

often face the problem of unfair distribution of

revenue. Many social media platforms distribute

content through algorithms, and creators' income is

highly correlated with content exposure. However,

these platforms often dictate distribution rules and

may favor higher-traffic content or mass-market

titles, making it difficult for small or deep creators to

earn a reasonable financial return. Moreover, in the

era of AIGC content dominance, automatically

generated content may be used for commercial

purposes on a large scale, and there is no need to

pursue copyright issues, so many platforms are more

willing to use AIGC, while creators in the original

data set are difficult to get any share. This unequal

distribution of revenue will discourage creators,

which in turn will affect the diversity and quality of

content on the platform.

Explore the Development Trend and Problems of Social Media from the Evolution Process of Content Creation

4 IMPLICATIONS OF THE

EVOLUTION OF CONTENT

CREATION FOR THE FUTURE

DEVELOPMENT OF SOCIAL

MEDIA PLATFORMS

4.1 Strengthen the Information

Screening Capability of Social

Media Platforms

Faced with the problem of information overload and

the degradation of the quality of the created content

caused by the use and convergence of UGC and

AIGC, social media platforms should respond to this,

and it is very important to strengthen the information

screening ability of social media platforms.

Optimizing the algorithm recommendation

mechanism of the platform is a way to the information

screening ability. At present, most social media

platforms adopt personalized recommendation

mechanisms based on users' interests and preferences.

Although this recommendation mechanism can

enhance users' engagement and meet their basic

needs, it is also easy to lead to the emergence of

information cocoon rooms. Therefore, the platform

should introduce a multi-dimensional content

screening and dissemination mechanism to balance

the relationship between user interest and content

quality. At present, many social media platforms have

tried to give priority to the recommendation of

verified high-quality news reports through the

combination of manual and algorithm and

recommend authoritative certified content or sources

with high information transparency, to ensure the

reliability and authenticity of information. At the

same time, the platform can also provide users with

more independent screening tools, such as labels and

tags, as well as the choice of information sources, to

improve users' autonomy in content creation and their

ability to screen content.

4.2 Strengthen the Regulation of

Content in Social Media Platforms

With the continuous development of social media,

platforms have become the main channel for

information dissemination, while also facing the

problem of disinformation due to inadequate content

regulation. Therefore, it is very important to

strengthen content supervision in social media

platforms, and social media platforms should build a

comprehensive and efficient supervision system.

Platforms need to improve the mechanism and

process of content review to ensure standardization

and transparency. At present, the audit standards of

many social media platforms are not clear enough,

and the decision-making process lacks transparency,

which is easy to cause users to question the platform

audit system. To this end, platforms should make

public their content moderation policies, including

the definition of illegal content, moderation

processes, and grievance mechanisms. Especially for

some ambiguous or sensitive content (such as satirical

remarks or sensitive political topics), platforms need

to formulate specific censorship rules for such

information, clearly stipulate punishment

mechanisms, and ensure information openness and

transparency to reduce disputes (Shin et al., 2018).

In addition, the maintenance of the sound

development of social media platforms cannot be

separated from the joint supervision of governments

and institutions. The government can legislate

minimum standards for the content regulation of

platforms, and institutions can conduct third-party

supervision on the moderation behavior of platforms

to ensure the fairness and transparency of content

release. This multi-party collaboration mechanism

can help reduce the regulatory burden of platforms,

improve the quality and authenticity of content

created by social media platforms, and reduce the

spread of false information by strengthening

diversified supervision.

4.3 Strengthen the Protection of the

Rights and Interests of Content

Creators

In the context of the rapid development of the

Internet, creators face challenges in creating content.

With the development of the Internet, more and more

content creators are active on various social media

platforms. However, due to weak copyright

awareness and imperfect relevant mechanisms, the

rights and interests of many creators are not fully

protected. For example, original content is randomly

reproduced or stolen by others, and the distribution of

income is not common, which will damage the

enthusiasm of creators in content creation. Therefore,

it is necessary to strengthen the copyright protection

of original content. The platform can detect and

review the content published by users through the

combination of manual and automatic methods, to

understand whether there is content infringed, to help

creators discover infringement and take measures in

time, and this combination can prompt efficiency and

accuracy. Secondly, platforms should ensure that the

PRMC 2025 - International Conference on Public Relations and Media Communication

distribution of revenue is fairer and more reasonable.

At present, many creators rely on advertising share or

rewards for income, but this income is often taken too

high by the platform, or the distribution mechanism is

not transparent, resulting in low income for creators,

reducing their enthusiasm, and reducing the richness

and quality of content. Therefore, the platform can

optimize the share ratio, or provide additional reward

mechanisms for high-quality content, to encourage

creators to produce more valuable works. In addition,

through the establishment of creator support

programs, such as the current Douyin and

Xiaohongshu platforms creator support programs to

encourage the release of original content and provide

resource support for newcomers, which can also help

them grow rapidly.

5 CONCLUSION

The transformation of content creation mode from

PGC to UGC and then to AIGC not only reflects the

rapid development of technology, but also reflects the

society's pursuit of freedom and diversity of content

creation. This process has driven the decentralization

of information dissemination, the rise of the platform

economy, and the satisfaction of users' needs for

expression. At the same time, the introduction of

AIGC brings completely new possibilities for

creation by improving the efficiency and quality of

content production. However, the rapid evolution of

these models has also brought many new challenges

such as information overload, uneven content quality,

and the spread of false information, which even

threaten the rights and interests of creators and the

normal development of content for social media

creators.

In the future, social media platforms should find a

balance between technology and culture, strengthen

the ability of information screening and content

supervision, establish a transparent and efficient

review mechanism, and curb the spread of false

information. At the same time, platforms should pay

attention to the rights and interests of creators and

encourage the creation of original content by

optimizing the copyright protection mechanism and

revenue distribution system. Under the background of

the integrated development of UGC and AIGC, the

platform should take user demand as the core,

combine artificial intelligence and user participation,

and promote the diversified and high-quality

development of content production, so that to achieve

the sustainable development of digital

communication.

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Explore the Development Trend and Problems of Social Media from the Evolution Process of Content Creation