Every month younger people are using Instagram as a news source
Why are millennials and Gen Z turning to Instagram as a news source? For many young people, clicking on to Instagram to get the latest news is now second nature. We all used to find the latest news in a daily newspaper. Instagram was a site that has traditionally shared lifestyle content rather than hard news. This shift in millennials and Gen Z users, have made news updates more important than ever.
The Guardian published a story this week. They spoke about young people getting information about protests, police actions and stay-at-home orders. Using their social media feeds – but the trend isn’t harmless.
According to recent data on how people are accessing news about the coronavirus pandemic, more than 25% of 18- 24 year olds in the United States reported getting their news from Instagram within the last month. The age group was unsurprisingly the most likely to use social media as a news source in general. Other popular platforms including Snapchat, where 19% of people in the 18-24 age range turned for news. Whilst TikTok drew in 9%.
Instagram features like IGTV (a standalone video app) and Instagram stories could contribute to its surge as a source for news since these features are visually interactive.
The latest trend
The trend toward social media as a news outlet isn’t exactly surprising. It seems to have risen in recent months as people turn to Instagram for information about community-led initiatives surrounding the Black Lives Matter movement. Experts suggest such platforms may present a more attractive alternative in an age of growing news-media scepticism.
“Social media offers, on the one hand, a medium for filling what feels like a vacuum of trustworthy information sources,” Amelia Gibson, assistant professor and director of the Community Equity Data and Information Lab at the University of North Carolina, told the Guardian.
Of course, this doesn’t by any means make social media a flawless news source. On platforms where anyone can be a journalist and fact-checking is — at best — optional. Concerns about bias, fake news and misinformation are valid.
“Our social media environments are still so segmented that some people really do live in different information worlds,” said Gibson. “In one information ecosystem, people might read this moment [and current social justice movements] as a hopeful international awakening related to anti-racism, others read it as a time of deep existential threat.”
The solution, according to Gibson, could be in a combination of social media’s ability to amplify voices and social movements, coupled with the journalistic rigor and responsibility of traditional news outlets. “I think that social media has done a lot to push social justice movements forward in the last decade but that traditional media still has a lot of power to command national and international attention.”
Helping businesses stay safe, secure and up to date
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