Journo-Influencers: What Are They And How Are They Changing The Landscape?
“Influencer” is either a dream job or a dirty word depending on who you’re asking—for some people, it’s both. But influencers are a new and strange part of culture in the information age. Celebrity status as it existed in the 20th century involved everybody knowing who the celebrity was due to excessive film, television, and print exposure, but with the internet and its many reaches into society, celebrity simply doesn’t work the same way. Instead, mini-celebrities head up these reaches of the internet, held up by their various platforms and communities. Sound familiar?
That’s right: the role of the journalist is strikingly similar to the roles of influencers, but with one key difference: celebrity status. Journalists in large part get out of the way of their own stories, but influencers take part in and model their work. As technology has evolved, more and more opportunities have shown up for these positions to combine, and for journalists to become more and more a part of the presentation of their work and the story which they are trying to tell.
For example, on TikTok and Instagram, some journalists are presenting their research and findings themselves in oral form to the camera. This has led to Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, and a few other social media platforms holding the top spot for where young people go to get their news. The combination of personality with facts seems to do well with younger crowds—millennials all the way down to the younger pieces of Gen Z.
The rise of these journo-influencers has also led to scrutiny on outdated social media practices that newsrooms impose on their employees. Since people want to engage more directly with their journalists, shouldn’t journalists be allowed to post their personal work on their page? Whose specialty is whose? Social media allows journalists to put in a lot more work to define themselves for the public and then bring those roles to their newsrooms. This can also lead to increased interactivity with the community and increased news intake.
Journo-influencers also provide a new kind of frontline resource: this information may not be in a place the average newsroom journalist was looking, and finding these niche resources of information can provide for a full story or partial context for current events, and therefore connect the journalist with a wealth of information to keep their work going. They also can be the bridge to hard-to-reach audiences, which includes people who use mobile devices as their primary access to news, rather than traditional newspaper readers or TV watchers.
Overall, these new kinds of journalists can really bring something exciting into the newsroom if they are supported and given the correct tools to connect and share their information. Otherwise, it could become an unmitigated ego exercise and create further distance between the public and newsrooms. It’s time to work together with journo-influencers for the sake of a better world.
