Co-creation in health

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Here's a refreshing look at the future of news that highlights the importance of going deeper into creating value for readers by providing more focus, relevance, context and opinion.

These are the characters that properly define what we now refer to as "curation" when it comes to content and news.

The following passages, extracted from the book, The News: A User's Manual, are by Alain de Botton, and have been excerpted from a lengthy article on The Week entitled "The Future of News".

"News organizations are coy about admitting that what they present us with each day are minuscule extracts of narratives whose true shape and logic can generally only emerge from a perspective of months or even years — and that it would hence often be wiser to hear the story in chapters rather than snatched sentences.

They [news organizations] are institutionally committed to implying that it is inevitably better to have a shaky and partial grasp of a subject this minute than to wait for a more secure and comprehensive understanding somewhere down the line.

...

We need news organizations to help our curiosity by signaling how their stories fit into the larger themes on which a sincere capacity for interest depends.

To grow interested in any piece of information, we need somewhere to "put" it, which means some way of connecting it to an issue we already know how to care about.

A section of the human brain might be pictured as a library in which information is shelved under certain fundamental categories. Most of what we hear about day to day easily signals where in the stacks it should go and gets immediately and unconsciously filed.

... the stranger or the smaller stories become, the harder the shelving process grows. What we colloquially call "feeling bored" is just the mind, acting out of a self-preserving reflex, ejecting information it has despaired of knowing where to place.

...We might need help in transporting such orphaned pieces of information to the stacks that would most appropriately reveal their logic.

...it is news organizations to take on some of this librarian's work. It is for them to give us a sense of the larger headings under which minor incidents belong."

The call for understanding how much greater value can be provided by curating news and information in depth, rather than by following the shallow, buzzy and viral path beaten by HuffPo, Buzzfeed and the rest of the gang, is clear.

But beyond context and depth, real value can only be added if we accept the fact that going beyond the classic "objective fact reporting", by adding opinion and bias in a transparent fashion, can actually provide greater value in many ways, as Alain de Botton clearly explains:

"Unfortunately for our levels of engagement, there is a prejudice at large within many news organizations that the most prestigious aspect of journalism is the dispassionate and neutral presentation of "facts."

...

The problem with facts is that there is nowadays no shortage of sound examples. The issue is not that we need more of them, but that we don't know what to do with the ones we have...

...But what do these things actually mean? How are they related to the central questions of political life? What can they help us to understand?

...The opposite of facts is bias. In serious journalistic quarters, bias has a very bad name. It is synonymous with malevolent agendas, lies, and authoritarian attempts to deny audiences the freedom to make up their own minds.

Yet we should perhaps be more generous toward bias.

In its pure form, a bias simply indicates a method of evaluating events that is guided by a coherent underlying thesis about human functioning and flourishing.

It is a pair of lenses that slide over reality and aim to bring it more clearly into focus.

Bias strives to explain what events mean and introduces a scale of values by which to judge ideas and events. It seems excessive to try to escape from bias per se; the task is rather to find ways to alight on its more reliable and fruitful examples. 

There are countless worthy lenses to slide between ourselves and the world." 

Overall, these ideas offer a truly refreshing look at the future of news and at the relevance that context and opinion could play in transforming this medium from a vehicle of mass distraction to one of focused learning and understanding for those interested. 

Must read. Rightful. Insightful. 9/10

Full article: http://theweek.com/article/index/256737/the-future-of-news 

Reading time: 10':20"

El futuro de las Noticias no es sobre los Hechos, sino sobre contexto, relevancia y opinión.

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Una raccolta di risorse sulla content curation che raccoglie diversi articoli 60, (in lingua inglese) e li organizza in 8 categorie principali:

1. perché c'è bisogno della curation?

2. Che cos'è la digital curation?

3. aggregazione o curation?

4. tutto sull'audience

5. dove è possibile trovare contenuti di valore

6. che cosa selezionare?

7. strumenti di curation

8, contributi dei partecipanti del corso

Gli articoli sono stati ordinati in categorie utilizzando Pearltrees, questo lavoro rappresenta il risultato di un corso sulla content curation

Curate and scoop it- this one shows you how to curate  effectively

Here's a valuable resource on content curation, "distilled" by the students of the DCurate MOOC lead Martin Couzins and Sam Burrough which organizes over 60 different articles, guides and tools on the topic.

This resources collection is presented in the form of a Pearltrees interactive map, organized into eight sections:

1. Why Do We Need Curators

2. What Is Digital Curation

3. Aggregation vs. Curation

4. It's All About Audience

5. How Do We Find Valuable Content

6. How Do You Decide What To Curate

7. Curation Tools

8. Contributions from participants

If you are new to content curation this is a good resource to bookmark and keep as a reference.

DCurate MOOC sign-up: http://www.curatr3.com/portfolio-item/how-to-be-an-effective-digital-curator/  ;

See also: http://sco.lt/99a09Z ;

Free to use.

Explore the guidemap: http://bit.ly/digitalcuratorguidemap ;

See also: https://gibbon.co/RobinGood/content-curation-guide ;

"we should worry about search engines becoming the arbiters of truth." De l'importance de comprendre comment on accède à l'information et de reprendre la main.

People who use Google are given the impression that they are interacting with the data out there, but they are actually interacting with Google and its view of the world.

"They are prediction engines that constantly refine a theory about who you are and what you are going to do or want next. Together, they create an universe of data for each one of us."

"In a 2010 paper published in the Scientific American journal, Tim Berners-Lee warned about companies developing ever more “closed” products and “data islands”.

"Morville, in his book Search Patterns, says that the first and second results receive 80% of attention. The vertical approach suggests to the user the idea of a single result that fully answers the question, enclosing possibilities and preventing alternative realization."

Or in other words, is our acceptance of what we see in search results eroding our ability (or willingness) to consider alternatives and employ critical thinking?

My favorite statement, "we must always be aware and well informed about the intentions of companies, and never stop having multiple options for any service."

This article was an eye opener for me. I had never questioned Google before.

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