In this blog I will be analysing my experience of using multimodality on Instagram for journalism. Having previously used Instagram and Facebook, I am very familiar with them, but being the most popular social media sites, should journalists use them more frequently?
The definition of multimodality is where there are multiple different modes when communicating a message for example, by combining an image, an audio or a text. In relation to current situations in both 2020 and 2021, social media continues to take over our opinions, viewpoints and the decisions we make in out everyday lives. Instagram currently has over 850 million users on its app and with its new interactive features such as streaming live stories which allows millions of people to view them, allows Instagram to open up public discussions like never before.
How we view our news is constantly defined by social media. Snapchat has developed a ‘Discover’ section which allows news companies to publish their stories in short form, so viewers can flick through the most recent news and gossip in a few minutes. Similarly, Instagram is following suit, with major news companies such as BBC News, Sky News and The Guardian all now having Instagram accounts which frequently post content on their stories with include pictures, videos and even meme’s to engage with their followers and readers. Therefore, Instagram has followed the rapid change in how we read our news and has created multiple new features to publish content:
Sharing Posts to your Story — If you wish to share someone else’s post to your own story, Instagram has made this accessible, and it also allows posts to reach a wider audience. A common use of this is when entering competitions, so the word is spread faster
Highlights — These appear on your main profile page, and allow stories that disappear on your story after 24 hours, to be categorised and keep them on your profile for people to continue to watch them
Reels — This is a new feature which allows someone to create and discover short videos that people can share with friends
Hashtags — When searching up a hashtag, other accounts can look at a photo that has that specific hashtag they searched for. Therefore if photos are hash-tagged, they usually reacher a wider audience
Having added such a plethora of different features, they have made the app as we know it today, and all these new features have increase Instagrams popularity with bloggers and journalists which is why I felt it was a key instrument when sharing my own content. Instagram also possess a lit of benefits for journalists and news services as it allows news to be distributed in a more accessible and informal way. Considering Instagrams’s usage, the BBC wrote an article titled ‘Instagram will overtake Twitter as a news source.’ It argues that the 2020 Reuters Institute Digital News report discovered that the use of Instagram for news has doubled since 2018. Therefore, there is a clear attraction with visual representations among users which is proven by Instagrams mass users.
When reflecting on my own experience using multimodality when blogging, I found countless benefits. When looking at promoting my own blogs, viewpoints, interacting with the news and other bloggers on social media, I found it extremely assessable. I created two story highlights, one for my social media profiles in order to promote them and gain a wider readership, and the other is based on my journalism research. Having an Instagram account to promote my blogs and my other research and profiles has allowed me to interact with other accounts by looking at their work. Having followers being able to reply to your stories and vote on your polls is a very engaging way to connect with other people and gain their opinion on journalistic matters that you are talking about.
So is multimodality the future of blogging and journalism? I believe that the news is progressively moving online and people are accessing and reading the news on social media more and more. Therefore, journalists must adapt to these changing times and multimodality is the way forward. As a recent Forbes article writes, “50 percent of Internet users surveyed said that they hear about the latest news via social media before ever hearing about it on a news station.” From this we can evidently see that social media is the way forward for journalist, and as Instagram is one of the most popular social media accounts, I found it was key for me when writing blogs and exploring other journalistic content.
