Technological and sociological motivations: Predictors of online content curation platform acceptance among journalists

While the nature of social media encourages and facilitates real-time news distribution, information overload on social media sites is challenging journalists’ gatekeeping role in filtering out relevant news information for the public in an increasingly speed-driven online news cycle. Online media content curation platforms -- based on principles of museum curation that knit technological and human skills for selecting, classifying, preserving, contextualizing and crafting content from various online sources in curated narratives -- have been identified by mainstream news organizations such as Al Jazeera and freelance journalists as a solution to this problem. Applying an adapted version of the technology acceptance model (TAM) through survey research, this exploratory study examines Swiss journalists’ acceptance of media content curation platforms. The results suggest: (1) positive associations between motivations variables and attitudes; (2) positive associations between attitudes and intention to use media content curation and, contrasting previous findings, (3) no effect of perceived attractiveness on attitudes. This study’s findings suggest new ways to encourage acceptance and use of media content curation platforms among journalists. Professional and theoretical implications are also discussed.

, 2013