Social curation in audience communities: UDC (user-distributed content) in the networked media ecosystem

Villi, M. (2012). Social curation in audience communities: UDC (user-distributed content) in the networked media ecosystem. Participations: The international journal of audience and reception studies, Special section: Audience Involvement and New Production Paradigms, 9(2).

Abstract: The focus of this article is on the involvement of audience communities in distributing content produced by media companies. The networked media ecosystem and the tools provided by the legacy media and social media companies enable the effortless sharing of such media content that people find relevant, funny or interesting enough to be worth for others also to read, listen or watch. The article contributes to audience studies by theoretically and empirically elaborating on these practices as social curation. Results from a qualitative study among the personnel of a Finnish newspaper indicate that engaging the audience in social curation is more important than involving the audience in content production with or for the company.