Content Curation: A new Form of Gatewatching for Social Media?
Type
conference paper
Date Issued
2012-04-05
Author(s)
Abstract
The increasingly active role of audiences in news creation is changing the traditional roles between media and journalists and their readers. New concepts on how the role of journalists in relation to an active audience is, will or has to change have been researched. One concept suggested by scholars is gatewatching, which is considered to replace traditional gatekeeping journalistic roles. A new, innovative practice of news reporting is social media curation involving crafting digital narratives out of online and social media content. By considering the concept of gatewatching as theoretical foundation, the characteristics of the process of social media curation are explored based on analysis of resulting stories. Randomly selected curated news stories about the Middle East revolutions extracted from the platform Storify's have been examined by applying content analysis on authorship, original contributors and digital sources. Empirical findings confirm that core gatewatching attributes can be observed in news creation based on social media curation. Examples of extracted gatewatching attributes are the selection and filtering of relevant online and social media information sources and provisioning of direct access to original sources referenced in the stories. However, in addition to professional social media search and filtering of available sources, traditional journalistic skills are still necessary in order to glue the curated pieces of information to a story.
Language
English
Keywords
Gatewatching
Gatekeeping
Social media curation
Storify.
HSG Classification
contribution to scientific community
Refereed
Yes
Event Title
13th International Symposium on Online Journalism (ISOJ)
Event Location
Austin, Texas
Event Date
20.-21.04.2012
Subject(s)
Division(s)
Eprints ID
227213