A Pew Research poll taken during the 2024 presidential campaigns showed that 20% of Americans now get their news from social media influencers on various apps.
Given the growing role of influencers in the democratic process, it seems we should seriously consider a few things: Should they be trained? If so, how, and by whom?
Summer Harlow is associate director of the Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas at UT Austin. She created a class for, what she calls, newsfluencers. "Content Creators and Journalists: Redefining News and Credibility" attempts to provide such influencers the tools to ensure accuracy and to build trust in their work.
V Spehar is a digital content creator who started UnderTheDeskNews. Spehar has accumulated over 3 million TikTok followers since starting their platform in 2021.
To better understand the changing media landscape, I spoke to both Harlow and Spehar.
Origins of the class
Harlow: Well, this is a collaboration between the Knight Center and UNESCO. When we first started talking with UNESCO about this, the journalist in me kind of cringed a little bit at the thought of, what do influencers really have to do with journalism? But the more that I think about how audiences are turning away from traditional journalism, how they've lost trust, how journalists are really struggling to be able to get their message across in a palatable, understandable way. Then we see all of these digital content creators and influencers out there really reaching audiences in new and innovative ways. It really makes you realize that, hey, maybe they're doing something that journalists can learn from. And so that's kind of how we started this project.
On starting UnderTheDesk
Spehar started their platform on January 6th, 2021, when they crawled under a desk to make a TikTok as President-elect Trump's supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol Building.
@underthedesknews Happy… three year anniversary of Under The Desk News. This is the FIRST episode ever done on January 6, 2021 #news #tiktok #history #civics ♬ original sound - UnderTheDeskNews
Spehar: One thing about TikTok is you've got to have a shtick. Mine was doing news from under the desk as opposed to at the desk. It was a little bit more visually interesting. We're living in very absurd times, so doing something silly felt like the right thing to do during a difficult story.
On why UnderTheDesk resonates with viewers
Spehar: I think because it came across as as more personal, a little bit more peer led. I've generally said that UnderTheDesk has been a safe space for news, in a kind way. Folks were looking for that kind of reassurance, this feeling that they were being spoken to and not at. Social media is just the next new platform for people to get their information from.
On how newsfluencers handle accuracy, accountability, and the independence of news
Spehar: Something that I've said before is every single day, I have to earn the trust of my audience because making one mistake does affect your credibility the same way that it does for any other journalist or news outlet. The difference is I don't have a ton of support in what I'm doing, so it could take a little bit longer to research things or you're leaning heavily on legacy publications. I was using a ton of their reporting to try and re-inform our readers, to make sure that the facts that I was presenting were accurate.
There's a lot of folks who will look at social media newsfluencers and try to make it less than journalism. I think that that's a mistake.
There's been this idea that there's some hierarchy or right way to do journalism and news. This is simply another form of digital journalism. The way that blogs were before, the way that digital newspapers were before. Folks have always had a resistance to what comes next, but I don't think it makes it less than.
On how newsfluencers can balance authenticity with receiving training on traditional journalistic practices
Harlow: Everybody needs to be trained. One thing that we encouraged in this course is the importance of media information literacy, something that is not just important for journalists to have, everybody needs to have it.
I think that if people who are using social media to get the news across, they can benefit from learning how to fact check information, that doesn't make what they do less authentic. It makes it more credible.
The transparency that so many of these digital content creators and influencers have with telling their audiences, this is why I reported the story, this is how I came up with who I was going to talk to, this is why I didn't interview this person or this is why I didn't do this other story. That kind of transparency has been missing from traditional journalism for way too long.
If you think about the kinds of journalism that mainstream media outlets do, that's very different than community journalism. That type of information that is closer to communities often is seen as more, "authentic." It's something that audiences trust more. And these large media outlets, unfortunately, have kind of lost that connection with their audiences.
Spehar: We should expect that news influencers do have that training and are fact checking. Folks assume that people are successful online because they're entertaining, not because they're fact-based or have employed the tenets of traditional journalism in crafting their particular story.
I've been asked before, well, who edits you? Who decides your ethics? My audience does. If I get something wrong, they're going to tell me.
On misinformation
Harlow: Misinformation is not something that is unique to social media. Social media absolutely amplified it. We see misinformation on traditional mainstream media as well.
Holding people who are doing journalism on social media to different standards than traditional journalists is a bad habit. All it's going to do is create deeper divides between journalists and influencers.
Yes, we have this huge problem with disinformation and misinformation, that's why I talk about the importance of media literacy. We need to really make sure that consumers can understand how to verify information and not just believe something because it fits within what they already believe to be reality.
On influencers at the DNC and RNC
This tension between influencers and traditional media gained prominence when influencers had access to both the Democratic and Republican National Conventions. Spehar posted a TikTok in August discussing their feelings post-convention.
@underthedesknews Why cant weeeee be friends? #journalism #creators #news @Katie Phang @We are a newspaper. @ChasingOz @The Pocket Report @TiffanyCianci @Carlos_Eduardo_Espina ♬ original sound - UnderTheDeskNews
Spehar: I have better distribution, and if I were writing a newsletter for the Washington Post, people would not have had any problem with that. It's because my platform is TikTok that they were like, well, this is deeply unserious. I think that is a bias that legacy media can have. They see folks like myself as some sort of line skipper or interloper because they haven't put any effort into looking at how I developed this ability to communicate with people.
There's a scarcity of work and of jobs in the journalism industry at large right now. We see so many newsrooms being shut down and when there's scarcity, people are going to start to try to elbow out anybody from the space that they believe is left. I think this is actually the fight between influencers and legacy media.
I've tried to talk to legacy media many times, helping them get onto these new platforms, understand the culture because we don't work without each other. I'm a great communicator and a wonderful performer, but I don't have the money to put boots on the ground in Ukraine. I'm not a photojournalist who is trained to go into combat zones and bring forth a story that requires delicacy and bravery. But if we work together, then more people can hear that story.
On what newsfluencers can learn from legacy media
Spehar: There's a lot of humility and you have to have a strong sense of resilience to be a news communicator of any type. That's something that I've learned a ton from from folks like Kara Swisher and Jen Psaki or even Bob Woodward.
Harlow: We put together this online course for journalists, communicators, and influencers. We coordinated a newsroom that covered World Press Freedom Day in Chile. We brought together journalists, influencers, and activists. All of that taught us that there is so much that both sides can learn from each other.
We all saw what happened when the internet came along and social media came along, journalism got left behind and that can't happen again.
Everything that journalists need to do a better job at, influencers also need to do a better job at, and vice versa. The way that influencers are so good at reaching their communities where they're at, that's what journalism originally was supposed to have been to begin with. Somehow we got away from that.
This is me pulling a complete 180 from where I was a year ago when we started this project. This is the future of journalism, what these newsfluencers are doing is really ideally what journalism is supposed to be at its very core. It's holding power accountable, but it's also serving the interests of the public.
On the possible TikTok ban
Spehar: There are hundreds of thousands of people who will be negatively financially impacted by a ban.
In addition, I think the biggest thing that we need to recognize is how this trial has played out, which the media has not covered. While we're talking about that on TikTok, I haven't seen that on the mainstream news.
As far as journalism goes, or news, or democracy, looking at what's happening with the TikTok case is an epic story that is getting missed because so many people have a bias against TikTok.
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