For better or for worse, social media has changed journalism.
It’s responsible for diversifying and increasing audience reach, making stories more interactive and creating a two-way channel for journalistic communication. But, It’s also brought along challenges in the face of public opinion, free speech and questions around what is fact or fiction.
It gets demonised a lot in journalism classes as we often see the bad parts of what might be called ‘journalism’ on social media, like an auntie sharing a questionable headline on facebook, or a false claim made by a ‘reputable’ news source. A lot of people don’t trust these platforms, with only nine per cent of Australians strongly agreeing that social media companies have genuine content.
However, a lot of us continue to engage in this platform for news. When surveying the lecture theatre of students, almost all put their hand up when asked who gets their news from social media.
Through learning and discussing how social media can be utilised for news stories in a trustworthy way that maintains journalistic principles, the benefits of including these platforms in stories can be seen, to contribute to a well-curated story that explores a topic comprehensively and neutrally.
This includes writing for particular trustworthy publications or maintaining a sense of transparency by backing up pieces with sources or methods for researching. Ensuring to consider what certain media would do for a piece, what can be achieved with a platform, or what is limited by the use of a certain platform is also to be noted when using it.
So, when it came to creating my own multimedia piece, I gained inspiration from people and publications who are doing it well. The Daily, an Australian news source mostly using Instagram was one of those, providing ‘news’ in a simple, effective and engaging way through text and image carousels on the image-based platform, as seen in the example gallery below.
The short nature of the TikTok video was a limitation that I had to think creatively about, planning my script around the most important information in the story, with the aim it would spark enough interest to get audiences to read the full article – another challenge at play with this.
All in all, learning how to harness the power of social media to support stories through proper skills is important to break down the bad wrap it gets, and contribute towards more ethical journalism practices.
