A1 Refereed original research article in a scientific journal
The owners of information: Content curation practices of middle-level gatekeepers in political Facebook groups
Authors: Malinen Sanna
Publisher: Sage Publications
Publication year: 2024
Journal: New Media and Society
Journal acronym: NMS
Volume: 26
Issue: 1
First page : 495
Last page: 512
eISSN: 1461-7315
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/14614448211062123
Web address : https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/14614448211062123
Self-archived copy’s web address: https://research.utu.fi/converis/portal/detail/Publication/68047025
Volunteer moderators play a key role when making judgements about which online content should be accepted and which should be removed. As such, their work fundamentally shapes the digital social and political spheres. Using the data obtained from 15 Facebook group moderator interviews as research data, this study focused on the content curation work by the middle-level gatekeepers of Finnish political discussion groups on Facebook. The findings show that the moderators feel strong ownership of the groups they moderate and of the information such groups provide, and as a result, they strongly shape the groups’ discussion and governing policy. Facebook’s governing policy for groups is vague, which gives space for group norms and identities to develop. The stakeholder groups (i.e. the platform administration, moderators and users) do not attend to the governance process all together, so negotiations among them are almost non-existent.
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