Content Curation: Finding Relevant Information

cybermeister (30)in #content • 6 years ago (edited)

There is no such thing in blogosphere as a perfect content. There are, however, right and wrong information to differentiate and to examine. The initial step to finding the appropriate information is to identify and secure the details you need. Here's how:

Reality vs. Perception

Reading any content through social media and blockchain platforms has become the stuff of many a curator's nightmare: information overload, plagiarized post or speech, and transformative work scenarios. The coping option would be just to know that in info sharing these three are interacting: (1) you (receiver), (2) another person (sender), and (3) the content itself (info/data). But, during that exchange, the quality of content [(1) things known as true (reality) and (2) things interpreted (perception)] becomes a product for curation.

Things Known as True (Reality)

A fact. Truth. Or, maybe an actuality.

You may have to find out whether an existing content is genuine and true or a reproduction of the original or just fabricated. Would you flag a new blog post that you consider copied or plagiarized because you saw another person published online (a year ago) a similar but older article? Would you be shocked if you found out that s/he published it in paperback 20-30 years ago? Here are a few things to consider:

Profile the creator (writer or artist). If s/he's anonymous, you might not get the right info about the person's reputation.

Check the source (date or place of origin). If it's not referenced, look for keywords.

Assess the keywords (words, phrases, tags). If you have the whole content with you and you compared it to 20 billion pages of published works and found out from PaperRater or Grammarly that 20% of it was stolen from someone else's book, would you downvote it or avoid the case?

Speaking of document checkers, what would content curation be without archiving of data? So digital curation is very important too, right?

Now, value is usually considered as truth, but it's still subjective. If a curator decides to treat a news report as a valuable fact today and upvoted it 100%, what would s/he do if s/he finds out that it's fake news tomorrow? Take into account also the interpretation of the curator. S/he may be qualified but how much content or information is s/he controlling?

Should manipulations of reality happen between the persons involved with the content, the entire curation process will be questioned.

Things Interpreted (Perception)

The very existence of content itself in the minds of curators make a certain blog post either pertinent or relevant for user consumption and/or the controversial "curation bias" that Facebook is being accused of. If, for example, platform curators from a certain race/political party/religion would prefer a certain content over another, would the entire curation governance lead the users to a constructed world of trending or promoted feed. So info, in this case, needs to be fact-checked before "we" conclude anything, like saying some people just suffer from cognitive dissonance or analysis paralysis.

"We" might learn something from George Orwell's dystopian perception in our search for relevant information.

"Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past."

That the content we feed on when its interpreted for us, i.e. controlled by a few curators, might really affect our perception of the things "we" think are true (reality).

Indeed, content curation is a powerful tool that could either prolong the life of a community or hasten its death in a digital economy.

More to the point, information can be sorted out by the ordinary user or manipulated by biased curators. So, what are checks-and-balances for? But this is actually the challenge.

Hence, be clear about what you need to know and what you want to post online. No one else, not even the curators, should decide the relevance of information for you. ■