JRNL 100: Group News Assignment

Harpekhna Mahajan, Hannah Larsson, Madison Keen

A New Way of News?

With over 100 million users who spend, on average, 25–30 minutes on the app every day, it’s safe to say Snapchat is popular, rivaling other social networking apps like Facebook. After many updates, the latest version, called Snapchat 2.0, allows users to connect with each other through images, filters, videos, stickers, text, and audio. With one of the newest changes being the addition of live video chats and voice messaging features, Snapchat has come a long way since it was founded in 2011 by Evan Spiegel as a simple app with the purpose of sending images viewable for a maximum of ten seconds.

Over half of Snapchat’s users are aged 16–24, giving it the prestige and interest that social networks like Facebook have begun to lose. It has maintained its hype and continues to wow its users by bringing in new and sometimes risky features that end up being essential to the app.

Live Stories

With their recent updates, Snapchat’s attempts to grow their ever-expanding user base have led them to branch into a completely new sphere of content: news. One of the largest changes to Snapchat’s core design was the addition of the Discover and Live sections in 2015, expanding the scope of the app from communication between friends to content created by other companies.

Snapchat’s Live Stories offer a mix of materials from content that is partially crowdsourced and partially created and curated by a news team.

A recent Live story from the Oscars featured impromptu interviews with stars and footage of the show alongside more concrete updates about what was being awarded.

Even bigger than the videos posted by Khaled and Kylie Jenner — the platform’s other big star, with 10 million followers — are Snapchat’s own Live Stories. These are mashups of news events culled from the feeds of Snapchat users and produced by the company’s 100-person content team of producers, editors, and a handful of journalists, who sometimes add commentary or contribute more footage. The biggest Live Stories segments — for instance, New York’s 2015 Snowmageddon and the Coachella music festival — can draw viewership in the tens of millions. (Bloomberg)

Discover

Currently with 16 partners, including giants such as BuzzFeed, CNN and MTV, Snapchat’s discover section features content created by each company specifically for this platform every 24 hours, on top separate content created for their Stories.

In their post on the Discover feature, the Snapchat blog explains:

“This is not social media.

Social media companies tell us what to read based on what’s most recent or most popular. We see it differently. We count on editors and artists, not clicks and shares, to determine what’s important.

Discover is different because it has been built for creatives. All too often, artists are forced to accommodate new technologies in order to distribute their work. This time we built the technology to serve the art.”

NiemenLab’s article summarizes some of the key features of Discover that highlight exactly why this section is such a different approach to news than other outlets.

1. It puts the news where the audience already is.

2. It is completely mobile native.

3. It retains flexibility in form.

With an already established user base, Snapchat doesn't need to seek out ways to draw an audience, but rather to keep that audience coming back for more. Users who may not go purposefully searching for news might look at this content while they’re on the app for something else (like sending selfies), but, because of the flexibility, could find themselves following the stories onto other platforms across the web, or viewing photos, and articles all within the same app. One appeal is that the stories are also extremely shareable — they can be sent to Snapchat contacts very easily, and the user can add their own caption or comments as well. In the following examples, different Discover channels feature content from Buzzfeed, National Geographic, and CNN, with each company leading to very different stories, GIFs, videos, and images.

News stories

With the new updates, Snapchat is aware that they won’t be able to deliver in-depth news in such a short time, but their goal is to be able to spark an interest in their viewers, and instigate them to research even further. This is a perfect example of how in an era of new media, televisions and newspapers are being easily replaced by newer simpler applications such as Snapchat.

In an article written by the New York Times, Nick Corasaniti talks about the innovative qualities that Snapchat possesses and how these contribute to its plan to become more newsworthy. He mentions the qualities that make Snapchat so popular amongst its millions of loyal followers, and how the creators of Snapchat are willing to use this to their advantage and make more of what Snapchat was originally for, which is seen through the introduction of discover and the new update.

Later in the article he discusses how the uses of Snapchat for attaining news are evident in the recent US elections. The app was able to summarize major debates and speeches from a different perspective, as Snapchat’s format made it seem a lot more personal than other news channels. In addition, Snapchat was able to cover a lot more footage that was not seen during the recorded interviews or debates, which intrigued viewers as they had access to more information than they would through the news.

“I remember missing one of the Democratic debates, and I just went on Snapchat and checked out their three-minute version of what happened at the debate, and it was darn informative,”

-Henry Barbour, Republican strategist from Mississippi

The election was one example of the many big stories that Snapchat has been able to cover, giving its users many reasons to look into topics they’re interested in and keep updated with major events. Not only do they get to stay in touch with their friends’ lives, they can also stay actively involved in current events. Finally, the article is able to show Snapchat’s potential and its uses based off their new update.

As a result, after finding this article, we were able to put Snapchat’s efficiency as a source of news to the test, and see how well it works for the average individual. We became more familiar with Discover and started asking our classmates and friends what they thought about the feature.

How has Snapchat become news related?

DISCOVER:

This relates back to the importance of the Discover channel. This feature lets Snapchat users look at short clips of news to keep them updated while still being able to send it to their friends and comment on it with text or emoji’s. This shows how Snapchat is still maintaining its main purpose, but is now adding more uses to it’s flexibility and accessibility.

The thing is, Discover and the Live Stories sections were added to Snapchat just over a year ago. Since then, how successful have they been with users?

Interviews

How often do you use Snapchat?

Isla:

Score: 63,520

“Very often, it’s the first thing I check every morning”

Cynthia: “I go on Snapchat maybe twice a week just to see what people have sent me. I don’t really send Snaps or look at stories unless someone tells me to.”

Megan: “I use Snapchat way too much”

Rishabh: “Not that often to snapchat friends, but I do enjoy going on the discover feature and seeing what is new.”

Matthew: “It’s probably my favourite app on my phone.”

Why do you think Snapchat is so popular?

Rishabh:

Score: 6,396

“I feel like Snapchat is some sort of visual narrative. Rather than getting a text, or a regular picture from someone it’s an easier way to document your day and major events and keep track of them.”

Megan: “ Snapchat has less pressure in comparison to sites like Instagram where everything is edited before posting. The informality makes it feel more like an actual conversation.”

Do you get your news from Snapchat?

Megan:

Score: 172, 871

“No. I get a lot more of my news from other social media platforms where people are talking about current events, and if I want something more in depth I’d go to an actual news website.”

Rishabh: “I don’t get all my news from Snapchat, but I feel like it introduces me to major events I wasn’t aware of, or keeps me updated on new things happening around me such as how the elections are going, or when the Oscars are.”

Liam: I like to see what is going on around me and around the world in a simplified way. Also, it’s a lot more visual and less writing which makes it entertaining to stay informed.

Matthew: “I think it’s pretty useful and fairly reliable”

Isla: “I sometimes get celebrity news, but it’s not what I would constitute real news.”

What do you think Snapchat has that other news sources do not?

Hannah

Score: 31, 483

“It’s very accessible — teenagers are lazy. Everyone is lazy. It’s easy to click on something and then leave if you don’t like it. And it’s a lot more fun looking than a traditional news article.”

Cynthia: “You have a constant barrage of news and it’s short so it’s very consumable for the average person, especially if they’re on the go.”

Rishabh: “It’s easy to use and less time consuming. Other news sources tend to start the story from the middle or expect you to have been following for weeks. However, Snapchat gives you an overview of what is happening the chance to see it from a personal level since the videos and pictures taken are from one person itself holding the phone”

What do you think of the Discover and Live sections on Snapchat?

Liam

Score: 20, 180

“I think it’s a good addition, as there’s much more to Snapchat than just taking selfies. You not only keep up with your friends but with the world and the innovative things that are happening every day.”

Megan: “It’s more of a snapshot— you could go to the original platform if you want more. If you actually wanted to know about something, you wouldn't go on Snapchat.

Rishabh: It adds more to the original application for sure. It also keeps me updated without having to search anything or watch the news, i can easily narrow down my search and stay updated with small videos

Cynthia: “I feel like while it is accessible, some issues don’t belong on such a short medium. Certain channels are more suited for this type of content than others.”

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