Social Media Curation and Journalistic Reporting on the "Arab Spring" : Mediated Communication in Times of Crisis

Arab uprisings have shown how information delivered by eyewitnesses has changed the way news is produced and distributed. War coverage narratives, created by filtering and curating news of the Middle East uprisings, have been crafted by media professionals and amateurs using Storify, a media content curation platform. This chapter investigates the nature of emerging media content curation platforms' coverage of the Arab Spring. It explores and empirically analyzes the characteristics and potential role of content curation in society and news delivery activities, particularly in times of crisis. Findings indicate that Storify both perpetuates and disrupts traditional news frames and sources. Stories exceed both government and editorial policies by providing alternative sources and building a media space where several cultures and opinions may be represented, thus, showing a more human and realistic face of events. However, our empirical analysis also indicates the use of a large number of unknown sources, engendering a lack of accuracy.