This article by Jonathan Stray makes another key point about the need to curate by News orgs, and move beyond merely hawking their own content. Curation is a needed service for the audience, and I can think of no better example of the kind of organization that MUST bear this mind than the church. No one denomination has EVERYTHING we need in the way of information or content. No one church does either, but that is why I believe that even on the local church level, the role of “filter†or “curatorâ€, is a important calling.
David Lochhead, former professor of theology at Vancouver School of Theology (and author of Theology in a Digital World), often spoke of how , before the information age, the church tended to be the sole source of information. Post-information age, the role oof the church as an arbitrar, filter, and curator is largely lost. But this particular era into which we now seem to be entering (the “Social Media†age, or the “Social Media Focused†step we are now taking within the “Information Ageâ€â€¦maybe the “Social Information Ageâ€) , we are recognizing the value of the social filter; we tend to like those things our friends like, and trust those things that have been vetted for us by our friends.
the industry will slowly discover that multi-platform will not be enough to compete with multi-platform and multi-source. I expect to eventually to see much more incorporation of search and social content, and many more syndication deals.
I can think of no more relevant organization than the church. There is a “theological mandate†for this, I think. We ARE a body that is VERY social; even INTERDEPENDENT. Social is CRUCIAL for us. More coming. This is HUGE for churches and church orgs to study and know.
Larry,
I agree also with you when you say: "need for understanding what the users of information want"…..I think that there are many clues that we can harvest from the "Social Graph" that Facebook is amassing, re: Likes, etc. where we can see how common interests can hook us up to several fellow "Likers" …..it seems to me there are hints for us in the church information organizations to begin finding ways to build a "theological social graph" that becomes smarter at helping users to discover those folks and organizations that match up with the greatest number of our "likes", very similar to the thing Amazon did way back in their beginnings: "People who bought X also bought Y", only now it is not limited to purchases but to expressed interests. Purchases could be considered a "stronger like", given that the interest or "like" was strong enough to prompt the spending of money.
Mark Zuckerberg has proven the value of the model of associating users by "likes" with Facebook, and I have been Googling for explorations of "church" and "Social Graph" to try and find more folks who areenvisioning a "Church Social Graph" or "Theological Social Graph". For a database-geek/theological guy like me, this is "double-geekdom".
And yes, it is difficult to get old-line institutions to accept it. I also find a disconnect between IT and these new models for Social Networking, and the theological implications of leveraging these new models. Much of my experience with church org IT has been that the development emphases is separated out from the theological awareness that I feel needs to be integrated into the mix. These IT departments are not utilizing those with technical knowledge who are also theologically attuned. So we get Social Media strategy that is no different from that of non-church organizations.
I agree. The horizontal reality of information–creation, flow and distribution–removes the centrality of the institution and replaces it with an interactive, connected network. However, this also puts the institution into a new reality that some organizations might not be able to easily accept. This is to recognize that pushing out messages to an audience awaiting every pronouncement is a thing of the past. And this leads to a need for discipline in messaging and the need for understanding what the users of information want, are interested in and will read or engage with. Old line institutions find this a very difficult reality to accept.