Fotopoulou, Aristea and Couldry, Nick. 2014. Telling the story of the stories: online content curation and digital engagement. Information, Communication & Society, 18(2), pp. 235-249. ISSN 1369-118X [Article]

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Abstract or Description

This article explores tensions between the imaginaries and material hindrances that accompany the development of digital infrastructures for narrative exchange and public engagement. Digital infrastructures allow civil society organizations to become narrators of their community lives, and to express solidarity and recognition. Often full development and implementation of such infrastructures result in drastic changes to an organization's mode of operation. Drawing from empirical material collected during an action research project with an organization of community reporters in the North of England, here we examine the visions of ‘telling the story of the stories’ that motivated such changes, the experiments in web analytics and content curation that in practice realized these visions and the socio-economic contexts that constrained them. We attend to the wider social imaginaries about the digital as they help us understand better how social actors construct the worlds they want to inhabit within information society through mundane everyday practices. Examining how perceptions of digital engagement translate into such concrete practices is necessary in order to gain insight into the ways in which material infrastructures, such as resources and technologies, intertwine with social and cultural expectations about how life should be with digital technologies.

Item Type:	Article
Identification Number (DOI):	https://doi.org/10.1080/1369118X.2014.952317
Additional Information:	The research reported here was conducted as part of Storycircle, a core project within the FIRM research consortium funded by the UKRC Digital Economy Programme: http://www.firm-innovation.net/ and http://storycircle.co.uk/
Keywords:	content curation, digital infrastructure, web analytics, social imaginary, data literacy
Departments, Centres and Research Units:	Media, Communications and Cultural Studies
Dates:	Date Event 7 October 2014 Published
Item ID:	10869
Date Deposited:	05 Nov 2014 12:15
Last Modified:	17 Feb 2015 11:58
Peer Reviewed:	Yes, this version has been peer-reviewed.
URI:	https://research.gold.ac.uk/id/eprint/10869

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