Snap chat me that Story…
When we think about Snapchat, we think of the popular picture app that pre -teens and college students use to take selfies. But what if it could be utilized by reporters as a tool for enhancing story telling? Seems crazy I know, but here me out for a minute and think of all the reasons why it could become a valued tool for reporters and news organizations. Many major corporations have teamed up with snapchat of late to partake in the app’s new “Discover” section.
Snapchat Discover
Snapchat has recently teamed up with social networks, magazines and television with a redesign of its entertainment app. The goal of Discover, in Snapchats terms; “To make professionally made and community curated content just as attractive as what friends share on the app.” The idea behind this being with eye catching peeks at what’s inside, users maybe more willing to click through and watch the combination of videos, text articles, images and ads featured within the Discover channels.
I think this is what is working well for news organizations and their use of snapchat, because it brings the news to an audience that relies on social media to get all of their news. You have to keep in mind the age range in which snapchat tailors to, which are the ages of 13–25; so by creating the Discover section, daily snap users are more likely to click on their favorite news organizations and will receive their news that way.
What Works
After doing some digging into snapchat and seeing what they are doing well with and how they are succeeding so far; I’ve come to the conclusion that their demographic is something that they really need to build off of and work in unison with news organizations, in order to build a better reputation as being a journalistic tool. The age range for frequent snapchat users is 13–25, with two fifths of US 18 year olds using the app multiple times daily. This is something that a news organization can take advantage of because as a user of snapchat myself, I often find myself checking the app even when I don’t have notifications, and frequently stumble onto the ESPN Discover section, and based off popular assumption I can imagine this is the same case for most teens and people of similar age to myself. With this in mind, you also have to take into consideration how people are getting their news in 2017. Most of the news that people take in on a daily basis comes from social media platforms, via Twitter and Facebook. A good quote that I found that portrays how well snapchat is doing so far came directly from the former Head of Digital at CNN, KC Estenson, “Snapchat is onto something that will be incredibly meaningful for its audience and super helpful for reaching people who aren’t consuming content on TV, newspapers and magazines.”
If you take this at face value, this quote is coming from a former member at CNN, who for the longest time was the big news station that was primarily broadcast. When times change, so does the way in which we report the news, and this goes to show that snapchat can be a useful tool in helping to expand the audience in which you are reporting to.
How News Organizations are using Snapchat
Big news organizations are starting to get in on the trend of using snapchat as a tool for reporters to tell stories either in a better way, or in a different more fun way. CNN is using a nice mixture of international and domestic news with enterprise reporting which is all done with the snapchat user in mind. Many newsrooms are using it as more of a crowdsourcing tool rather than the more traditional set up. It is one of the fastest ways to gather content in video form, which can then be transferred to any social media platform.
There are so many reasons that newsrooms around the country should be using snapchat as a tool for reporting, but there is one reason in particular that snapchat can go beyond any other reporting tool to help tell a story. Yusef Omar, of the Hinduism Times, is using snapchat to get deeper into stories that would never be told because of the use of big lights and camera equipment. He would tell the stories of victims of abuse, who would be too afraid to show their faces on camera. Rather he used snap filters to hide the individual’s faces and allowed them to take video selfies so they could tell their stories to the cameras, while also being assured that their identities were completely concealed.
This is the interesting way that reporters can utilize snapchat. A simple idea such as filters which was originally designed to be playful, can help to tell the more personal and intimate stories that would either never get the chance to air because of privacy concerns, or enhances them because there is no need to blur out the person’s identity, which usually takes away from the emotion of the piece.
Snapchat without a doubt has the potential to be used as a great tool for reporters and newsrooms everywhere, it just boils down to the ways in which we use it to tell a more appealing visual story, which in my personal opinion is why snapchat is leaps and bounds ahead of media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook. It’s all about the visuals in reporting.
