The internet is flooded with real-time streams of information from the likes of Twitter, Facebook, Flickr and the many other social media platforms which allow people from around the globe to provide eye witness accounts and information on any topic imaginable. These streams of information can be valuable to journalists gathering crucial eye witness accounts, but pulling together information from various social media sources and retaining their format and interactivity can be tricky and time consuming.
Storify is a social media curation and reporting tool developed for both professional journalists and citizen bloggers to help them quickly and efficiently pull together tweets, videos, photos and websites to form a cohesive and dynamic story. Storify’s platform allows you to search Twitter and other social media within their site and simply drag and drop items you want to use in your story. Users can add text between these media excerpts to create a seamless narrative.
Since being released in private beta last fall and publicly this past spring, the Washington Post, the White House, and Al Jazeera are just a few of the organizations utilizing Storify to effectively curate social media to provide a more complete or unique point of view. Click on the image below to view a Storify created by NPR’s Andy Carvin used to tell his story.
Storify also recently released an update which allows you to put your stories in a slideshow format. This is very helpful when your site space is at a premium. Your viewers can click and flip through slides instead of a long downward scroll, which allows all the pertinent information around you story to remain in sight for your viewers.
Storify isn’t for everyone and does require ample time to learn. Consider using it in your next blog post, journalism project or class lecture. It’s an excellent way to seamlessly weave your opinion with the insight, reports, and eye witness accounts provided by others, both common citizens and esteemed experts. Click on the image below for a video on the basics of Storify and try creating one for yourself.
