The Importance of Content Curators in Distribution Taiwanese News on Facebook

For the last stage of my travels I’ve arrived at the IAMCR 2019 conference in Madrid, where I’m starting with a session of journalism. The first presenter is Yu-Peng Lin, whose focus is the role of Facebook in news production and distribution in Taiwan.

Online news reading is now very prevalent in Taiwan, and this has affected journalistic practices. Facebook is the leading social media platform there, and some 53% of users access the news through this platform. The embrace of the platform by news organisations has led especially to the rise of a new role of content curators, who push new news articles to the platform and frame them in a way to make them more interesting. Are they acting as gatekeepers, producers, or in other roles, then?

The project studied this in the context of three news outlets, examining the work of five content creators through in-depth interviews and content analysis. What emerged was an abstracting practice that introduced shared articles with brief synopses of the articles’ main points; a humorous style that sought to attract and engage readers with intriguing and funny framing; and an opinionated and expressive style that highlighted controversial issues in the articles.

Content curators also engage in some level of dialogue with readers, and choose articles which may encourage such dialogue. Reader feedback is also important in informing further article selection for the outlets’ Facebook pages. This also intersects with the platform’s algorithms, which will affect what news posts are seen by audiences. Overall, then, there may also be a decline of editorial independence in the posting and curation choices for news on social media platforms.