Shareable media vs. Hard Hitting Journalism
Everyone loves a light read in today’s 140-characters-or-less society. I’m not sure about any factual evidence, but I can tell you this: the less words, the more GIFs, pictures, and short videos, the more attracted most people will be to keep reading, and clicking- and to share.
Shareable media wins in the trending world. The more fluffy the story, the higher the views it seem. It seems actual news is hardly trending right now — and we just had the #NHPrimary??
Even more depressing… you can select certain categories of trending and the “Politics” section is hardly even newsworthy either!
Please try your best not to mind the quality of this photo — I have a PC and I haven’t quite mastered the screenshot function. But as you can see, even “news” about politics makes you cringe.
Sites like Facebook, and Twitter, with “suggested for you” on the side, with links to things you’ve recently Google searched — right down to articles that are created with vague generalizations to appeal to you: (here are some examples of clickbait “articles” although I’d hardly even call them that)
37.1K People were talking about this!! Click into it: it’s just a bunch of travel destinations, nothing special, but has been spruced up by hip and fun looking 20 something girls.
I really don’t get it, but somehow with Facebook and Twitter shareable media has slithered its way in front of actual hard hitting news. People are just so darn lazy. My thoughts on that is that journalists need to keep in mind when sharing on social media to utilize the lazy mind: pictures, short videos, GIFs — but not let that take away from the newsworthiness of the content you’re generating.