AD ALTA
JOURNAL OF INTERDISCIPLINARY RESEARCH
JOURNALISM ON SOCIAL MEDIA: HOW TO TELL STORIES AND NEWS TO YOUNG PEOPLE
a
MAGDALÉNA ŠVECOVÁ
Faculty of Mass Media Communication, University of Ss. Cyril
and Methodius, Nám. J. Herdu 2, Trnava 917 01, Slovakia
email:
a
svecova.magda@gmail.com
Abstract: Digitization in media industry and in the other segments has brought many
challenges for journalists. First of all, it is lower rate of attention on the side of
consumers. Secondly, it is multitasking which goes hand in hand with using of social
networks like Facebook or Instagram. These two problems are mostly related with
young people, especially children and teenagers who were born as digital natives. This
paper will analyze ephemeral images, so called Stories, which media use to tell stories
to promote their web content mainly for young people using this kind of platform. We
will try to figure out why this is an appropriate way of informing young generation
called generation Z.
Keywords: digitization, ephemeral journalism, Instagram, Snapchat, social network,
visualization
1 Communication on social networks
Social networks initially served only as a tool for citizen
journalism. Nowadays, they are very good helpers for both
media and individual journalists. In journalism, they serve
several purposes:
Website content propagation which is related with
expansion of readership.
Getting tips about various topics that can be processed as
journalistic content. Social networks are one of the primary
sources of information from different areas.
Feedback from audience not only in the form of comments
but also through private messages, sharing, or other
interactive elements (likes, Facebook responses, etc.).
Journalist can communicate with readers by informing about
their articles, or work, or colleagues' articles on their private
accounts.
Social networks offer an area for citizen journalism, smaller
media and blogging.
Creating specific content for specific social networks.
This very last point has created a need for the production of
original content designed primarily for social media delivery.
These contents are especially characteristic by the viral potential,
which means content should be shared as much as possible,
without much effort, for example without the need for
sponsorship it should reach as many people as possible. This
means, in particular, that social network content is brief and
visually attractive using especially videos or photographic
content and images. Above all, this means that social networks
are responsible for the trend of content visualization. Social
media and the presence of media on this platform have redefined
the way the public is informed about up-to-date "hot"
information and news, as they often appear first on the social
network, later on the media, depending on the type of event.
Another feature of journalism on social networks is their
connection to mobile phones, which represent the fastest way to
process news or feedback. The number of smartphone owners is
steadily increasing as well as fast internet coverage and speed.
Social networks are therefore the fastest medium.
We can say that social networks together with the Internet are
new media. Their main advantage is that users use them
continuously, although often only in the background and on the
other hand recipients do not open individual posts very often
even though special content for social networks is linked to the
web site, or refers to the web in the description.
It is not anything new that Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and
Snapchat, they work mainly on the visual side. Users primarily
share content like photos and videos, and the main device is a
mobile phone or tablet. At the beginning, it should be said that
the existence of media on these social networks is a necessity,
though it is not compulsory to exist at all of them. For example,
Snapchat is not open to all media and chooses who can
contribute to Discover. The Instagram and Snapchat are
primarily for young generation. Thanks to the regular content on
these two visual social networks, the media can engage new
potential younger readers and also increase brand awareness.
Audiovisual content, especially on Facebook and Instagram is
very important to produce. It has even a greater impact on the
audience. Video on the social network (especially Instagram)
should be 1:1 and should contain subtitles. Additionally, the
visual elements shared on social networks are infographics,
journalistic photos. There are also so called and semantic
graphics. Again, it is a 1: 1 format containing text and picture.
The most common are quotes, science and technology facts,
showbiz, and so on. It is combination of the media graphic
identity and logo. Semantic graphic should be comprehensible
without the accompanying text (status) to be easily shared. The
last one new type of social media content is so called ephemeral
images, known as Stories, which originally come from Snapchat
and later this concept was taken by Instagram and Facebook. We
will study their functions and influence upon audience in the
following chapters.
2 Methodology
Ephemeral images are quite new digital content for newsrooms
and media at all. Even though almost all of most popular social
networks use “story mode”, we can say that Snapchat invented
it. For that reason, we decided to analyze mainly Snapchat´s
Discover with seventeen media involved in this project. For
example, there are such brands like Daily Mail, Mashable,
People, IGN, MTV, BuzzFeed, National Geographic and many
more which represent the biggest progress in digitization and
convergence of journalism. On the other hand, named media are
leaders in their field of journalism worldwide. We chose content
analysis of already mentioned Snapchat channels with
consideration of Instagram Stories. The main goal is to find out
most frequent ways of communicating news by ephemeral
images, known as Stories. We also would like to generalize this
specific type of communication to bring new theory on the field
of mass media communication and describe new journalistic
genre.
3 Spreading news with ephemeral images
The media that managed to publish content on Snapchat or
Instagram use the broad functionality of these social networks,
especially the visual possibilities offered by them which border
on infotainment, tabloidization and citizen journalism.
The way of content creation and publication is dependent on the
video / photo length which is 10 / 15 seconds. After 24 hours
content disappears. It is also possible to swipe down and read
full article on the website of media. The purpose of publishing
on Snapchat and Instagram is not just to promote and refer to
existing content, such as articles on the web, but Discover and
Stories also have a place to strengthen the media brand for the
target group of teenagers. In the following lines, we'll give
examples of how the media is communicating on Snapchat and
Instagram focusing on the target group: Generation Z, people
born after 2000 who have not experienced life without cutting-
edge technology. Generation Z is not willing to act or make
moves, even if it is in its personal interest. For example, meet
and talk to friends? Generation Z would rather stay in the
comfort of home on the Internet because everything is solved by
modern technologies. Their armor is the distance from the
outside world which separates them from everything that does
not concern them directly.
1
1
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i ľudia. [online].[2016-11-6]. Available:
˂http://strategie.hnonline.sk/spravy/782335-generacia-z-su-maximalne-digitalni-
ludia˃
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