Curation – Page 2 – Online Reporting, Research & Writing

Here’s a summary of my social media and aggregation accounts

I’ve been posting online and aggregating for a long time, so I do have quite a few “aggregation sources” and other links about myself. The one place where you can find me is my own website, NancyHanus.com.

But my Twitter Feed (@nhanus) and my Instagram account have also been around for more than 10 years. I use YouTube and Vimeo to upload video, and SoundCloud for audio, although must of the things I’ve uploaded have been on publication sites, so what you’ll find on my personal profiles are videos of my family (mostly my daughter doing gymnastics!)

One YouTube channel you might find interesting, though, is this one called JournalismVideo, which I created for my MSU journalism classes and study abroad trips in 2010-2011. I had actually forgotten all about it until I dug it up for this blog. If any of you want to upload a video for this class on this site, let me know!

A journalism video account on YouTube for student videos.

I use Nuzzel for aggregation, as well as Feedly and Google Alerts. Feedly has been ticking me off a bit lately because the service keeps trying to upgrade me — and really restricts what I can do and have access for free. As a result I don’t use it much anymore. I love Tweetdeck for aggregating tweets and seeing Twitter lists.

There are a couple of really cool sites that allow you to aggregate in fun ways, such as StumbleUpon, which let’s you “stumble” into really cool stories based on your interests. I suggest you give it a try! I also like Flipboard, which I use on my iPhone and iPad.

For my professional profile, I use LinkedIn. I also have a profile at Muckrack.com. I have a Google+ account, but there’s not much there. It’s a good idea to have one because it gives you good SEO (Search Engine Optimization) but it’s just not something I keep up with.

Ron French on Betsy DeVos interview

Recently Ron French curated a story for bridemi.com about the 60 minutes interview with Betsy DeVos over the state of Michigan schools, as well as gun control, and her bad reputation. The interview was… well… it wasn’t good, it was in fact pretty bad. DeVos stumbled through almost every question that was asked and really showed how much she didn’t know about Michigan schools.

What was good was the way Ron curated the story using links to previous Bridge articles to let readers get extra information on the story that they might not know. A good article he links to is Michigan’s K-12 performance, but many other links in the article are used.

Other than links directly in the article to relevant stories on Bridge there are also links in between the breaks to sources that were used to create the article. A good link for those who are looking to find out more about their school districts is Stanford University’s district comparison chart.

Gun control situation encourages students to walk out in protest

Across the nation, gun control has been a controversial issue that many citizens have an opinion about. The #ENOUGH movement sprouted from it and motivated students to walk out of class in protest saying the school shootings have to be stopped.

Celebrities like singer, Zendaya took it to social media to show their support:

The future. #rp

A post shared by Zendaya (@zendaya) on Feb 23, 2018 at 11:10am PST

Students from different grades, schools, and universities made it a duty for themselves to stand up to legislation as they look upon the gun control situation. Samantha Raphelson from NPR reports in an article on the issue, a student said, “Stand for us, or beware, the voters are coming.” Students have lost hope that adults will act so they took matters in their own hands.

Following this movement, another one sparked up called #Marchforourlives which was in protest of gun violence in California.

The New York Times reports on the #Marchforourlives movement in California.

The New York Times reported in an article about the march that more than 30,000 people marched through downtown Los Angeles. The cause brought all these citizens together because they needed to express their feeling of danger.

The Times also describes a young girl who held up a sign reading, “Am I next?” Signs like this were held with different messages that captured the purpose of the march.

The New York Times’ take on aggregation

The New York Times aggregates in many of their articles such as the one I recently read on how the benefit of caffeine on one’s physical performance is dictated by their genes.

In order to support the stance on caffeine the Times took, they aggregated sources in order to present credibility and logos.

One of these aggregated sources is linked under the words, “a new study of the genetics of caffeine metabolism,” which brings readers to a scholarly journal abstract which summed up the research done on the effects of caffeine beside different types of genes. This is a reliable and informative source which improves on the article itself.

Another aggregated source is linked back to an article The New York Times wrote on the buzz caffeine could give different people depending on their genes. This source roughly covers the same topic, but doesn’t involve the physical performance aspect, which makes it a strong choice as a source to aggregate because with it comes another variety of supportive information.

The New York Times aggregates an article it previously wrote in order to support new information.

Overall, I think The New York Times put together a good aggregated article that expressed ideas and information while backing it up with different sources.

Betsy Devos’ interview calls for curated article by Ron French

Aggregation and curation develop Ron French’s article in Bridge Michigan as he formulates a “cheat sheet” for United States Secretary of Education Betsy Devos’ interview on “60 Minutes”.

French aggregated in order to support information he provides throughout his article and guides readers to these aggregated sites in order to maximize understanding in each point he makes.

French aggregated sources like himself when he mentioned that Michigan school test scores were not improving which contradicted Devos’ statement about the advancement of scores as students move districts by school of choice. French approached this by first stating who did the research, Michigan State University in this case, and then linked an article he wrote that summarized the research within the phrase, “didn’t improve test scores”.

Another aggregated source French includes in this cheat sheet is another finding that supports Michigan’s poor test scores. He presented the information by introducing the analyst, Brian Jacobs, who put the study together. French summarized his findings in a short sentence in this article but linked Jacob’s faculty page to a phrase that described him professionally. If readers wanted to find out more about Jacobs, they could then click the link and read up on him.