Ephemeral Journalism: News Distribution Through Instagram Stories

Abstract

Social media are increasingly integrated into media routines as channels to gain access, verify and spread information. Likewise, as mobile news consumption is standardized, the media experiment with native formats for these platforms. This study analyzes how the media use Instagram Stories, to identify the strategies that they apply, as well as the adaptation and innovation features on this platform. A content analysis was conducted from a sample of 17 online media that use Instagram Stories, both legacy and digital native. The results show an upward potential in ephemeral news production, one that is increasingly developed and unique.

The Health Crisis on Instagram: How the Media Are Building Their Agenda on the Visual Social Network During the COVID-19 Pandemic

“…The visual platform Instagram attracts multiple media organisations seeking to increase their visibility and interact with the younger audience. Previous research has shown that the media maintain daily activity on this platform, sharing photos and videos on their feeds (Vázquez-Herrero, 2019) and generating ephemeral content for their stories, tending to follow the criteria of posting attractive, striking and innovative content, instead of that which is informative and current (Vázquez-Herrero, Direito-Rebollal, and López-García, 2019). Previous studies have also concluded that recurring content on the visual platform Instagram is in the main apolitical and related to soft categories, such as fashion, travel and food (Al Nashmi, 2018).…”

Intersections between TikTok and TV: Channels and Programmes Thinking Outside the Box

“…The immediacy of content distribution has given rise to forms such as live-blogging (Matheson and Wahl-Jorgensen 2020) and the live broadcast of events through Facebook Live, Periscope, or Snapchat, which achieve engagement of users thanks to immersion, immediacy, interaction, and sociality (Haimson and Tang 2017). The popularisation of Instagram resulted in the publication of photographs, computer graphics, or videos, and in the production of ephemeral content through its stories for the dissemination of its news, coverage of events, the publication of specials, or the search for user interaction (Vázquez-Herrero et al 2019). Instant messaging networks such as What-sApp and Telegram have also been adopted by the media for the personalised distribution of their information content (Negreira-Rey et al 2017).…”

Let’s dance the news! How the news media are adapting to the logic of TikTok

“…The dislocation of news journalism, a process linked to the dependency of news media on platform companies, has made the production of specific and meta-communication content for social networks an imperative (Ekström and Westlund, 2019), while new visual microformats are developed in which the news is reduced to its minimum unit (Silva et al, 2017). In their adaptation to social networks, the media have: experimented with live blogging or streaming through platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, Periscope or Snapchat (Artwick, 2018;Haimson and Tang, 2017;Hewett, 2015;Matheson and Wahl-Jorgensen, 2020); explored new formats for Twitter (García-Avilés and Arias Robles, 2016); sought a closer relationship with users through private instant messaging networks such as WhatsApp and Telegram (Boczek and Koppers, 2020;Dodds, 2019;Negreira-Rey et al, 2017) and joined in the production and distribution of ephemeral content, first through Snapchat and then with a more solid commitment to Instagram Stories (Anderson, 2015;Bayer et al, 2016;Vázquez-Herrero et al, 2019).…”