143. Name: Holly Anne Steel Title: Curated Conflicts: Media Witnessing and Representation in Curated News Coverage of the Syria Conflict (the Cases of BBC, Guardian, Storyful, Al Jazeera English and New York Times) Institution: University of York Country: United Kingdom Date: 2016 Language: English Abstract: This research addresses the proliferation of witnessing social media and the consequent emergence of curation for online news coverage. It critically examines curation as a representational practice based upon witnessing social media by focusing upon a case study analysis of the 21st August 2013 chemical attack in Ghouta, Syria. It draws upon interviews with journalists working with social media at the BBC, The Guardian and Storyful, and qualitative analyses of three curated texts produced by Al Jazeera English, The Guardian and New York Times. The research examines the role of social media in newsrooms, the witnessing affordances of social media curation, and the resulting representations of conflicts. The results show that witnessing social media operates backstage to provide contextual understanding to the journalist curator and offer limited opportunities for media witnessing for distant audiences. The curated text reveals the ways in which news organizations assert their professional norms over the deluge of information emerging from the conflict zone. What results from the strategies is the curated other, who is present and networked, but unacknowledged and framed with uncertainty within the space of appearance.
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