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Social media: What’s the difference between curation and journalism?

By Matthew Eltringham. Originally published 7/03/2011 by bbc.co.uk. This article is republished with permission.

A lively conversation over the weekend - of course on Twitter - between two informed protagonists highlighted an issue previously discussed here.

The debaters were Neal Mann, @fieldproducer, a sharp and savvy Sky journalist who mixes old-school cunning with new media nous, and Andy Carvin, @acarvin, National Public Radio’s social media strategist and arguably the doyen of new media journalism.

They take different approaches to social media which is apparent in their conversation - predictably, perhaps, as a result of their differing editorial backgrounds. Mann uses social media as a source to inform his mainstream media journalism; Carvin, at least in the case of the latest run of stories from the Arab world, has focused his journalism on and from social media platforms - curating a fascinating stream of tweets from Tunisia, Egypt and Libya.

Entertaining though their conversation was - the answer to the question is a simple, ‘yes, of course there’s a difference between curation and journalism’ - you only have to look at @acarvin’s Twitter timeline to understand the difference.

They’re both perfectly valid and useful activities but they perform different roles: curation compiles and collates; journalism adds a layer of narrative, context and analysis.

However, I don’t want to get into a semantic debate about definitions, rather to argue that this discussion missed a bigger point: that journalism, be it social media, citizen or mainstream, is changing as a result of social media.

On Friday, ‘mainstream’ media made a bad mistake when it ran images of fighting in the Libyan town of Zawiyah - Reuters picked up the video from social media, which claimed/believed it was legitimate ‘today’ footage. Other news organisations then picked up the material and rebroadcast it until they discovered it was from fighting in exactly the same location but from the previous week.

Was that a failure of mainstream media or social media? It was certainly a failure of journalism - and that’s the point: the differing strands of journalism and/or media are converging.

This is what I argued in articulating my theory of the ‘line of verification’: where previously mainstream media would wait until they had two confirmed sources before reporting an event, now that process of ‘verification’ - thanks to social media - is taking place in the open.

‘Old media’ journalists are being forced to engage with the rumour, gossip, facts and factoids being circulated in places like Twitter and Facebook; to look at them and work out whether they are ‘true’ or not before running with them.

Mainstream media cannot do without social media and social media is learning to leverage its power over mainstream media. Ultimately, although the principles of ‘good journalism’ remain the same, the landscape in which it operates is changing dramatically. And that, I think, is to the good - bringing transparency and accountability to everyone’s journalism.

Tags: andy carvin, facebook, journalism andor media, mainstream media, mainstream media journalism, media journalism, media journalists, media strategist, neal mann, sky journalist, social media, social media citizen, social media platforms, twitter, zawiyah reuters,

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