Yesterday, I took a look at how Facebook provides a news feed to readers. It wouldn’t be fair to not give Twitter the same treatment.
Of course, the simplest way to get the news is to follow the news sources that you trust and rely on for accuracy and good reporting.
That message applies to both platforms.
But, in terms of news aggregation, Twitter has taken a different approach with its Twitter Moments.
Interestingly, it’s not available in Hootsuite yet so I have to go to the actual Twitter source to get it – web and mobile.
The Moments feature skims the top news of what’s trending in a number of categories.
I grabbed my screenshot from the “News” category since that’s the area that I would be most interested in. (And, there was a story at the top of the default category “Today” that I’d rather not include in a post)
I was immediately impressed with the results that I get from Moments.
The stories, in this case, are indeed catered to this Canadian reader.
Like my comments with the Facebook discussion, it’s not the same as going directly to the news source. However, the aggregation does pull in content from sources that you might not visit intentionally. That bit of surprise makes interest reading and curation so valuable to this reader.
It also speaks loudly to the notion that we must be critical and aware of what we’re reading and where the sources originate. Like the controversy over the Facebook algorithm, the curious reader needs to wonder just what is being shown and, more importantly, what isn’t. How and who determines what makes it “in”.
So, if your classroom media literacy includes comparing the Facebook news to the traditional news, you should throw in Twitter Moments as well.
As more people turn to these forums for their news – particularly our students – it’s important that they understand the source and objectivity of what they’re reading.
doug --- off the record 