The Rise of Influencers and the Decay of Journalism
Traditional journalism is slowly yielding to influencer-driven ”information”. It results from an economic shift in favor of social media and the pervasive laziness of newsrooms.
This month’s cover of Wired UK looks like a canary in the coal mine. As a novel spin to cover climate change, the magazine elected to put Greta Thunberg on its cover. This is a choice that speaks volumes about a growing trend in news: prominently featuring social-media stars.
Ten years ago, when Wired UK hit the newsstands, sixteen years after the formidable US original, it would probably have featured a carefully researched selection of innovators, game changers, all sorts of people and technologies who could have an impact on global warming. Instead, its editors now prefer to feature a pure byproduct of the social media whirlwind: a 16-year-old Swedish girl, who, according to Wired UK, epitomizes the teenage activist rebellion.
In a 4600-word piece, the author draws a gentle profile of a young girl depressed by the state of the planet and determined enough to call out government and MPs. Catapulted by a 1.1 million-follower Instagram account and a 2.7m-follower Twitter feed, she’s now a global star, with her pigtails, her sullen look and, and, according to the piece, “. . . a clear inability to speak in certain situations . . .” Judging by the scarcity of quotes, interviewing Greta Thunberg must be an ordeal. In a rather candid fashion, still, she admits “not really [having] done anything” (how could it be otherwise at 14?) except drop out of school and stop traveling by plane, which conveniently prevents her from spreading the gospel in China or India.
Let’s be clear: I don’t mind the young Thunberg becoming a generational emblem or bringing attention to the planet’s destruction. The more pressure her vast audience can put on the governing elite, the better.
But I have two issues with her narrative.
First, I’m appalled by the sheer cynicism on display from the girl’s parents who ride her celebrity acquired at the expense of her education. Instead of protecting their daughter, and nurturing her passion in the framework of Sweden’s remarkable education system, Greta is exhibited like a circus animal—an aspect that is completely left aside by the Wired UK piece. Dropping out of school is not a matter to celebrate; it’s a curse that could follow Greta for the rest of her life. My only and sincere hope is that her fame will fade and that she will go back to school and take part in a solid scientific curriculum that will buttress her commitment.
My second issue is about the decay of journalism that goes along with the growing reliance to “influencers”. Wired UK’s motive to put Thunberg on her cover is the same as that for Buzzfeed’s ongoing celebration of the Extinction Rebellion: it sells (or it clicks). And it does so without too much work, which is even better for depleted, dashboard-driven newsrooms. By featuring an influencer in a news treatment, you can’t be wrong. Complexity, nuances, and research are a tough sell in editorial meetings.
There are exceptions, like at The Guardian, which, way before anybody else, created in 2015 a recurring campaign to cover climate change issues, manned by a comprehensive staff. Here is how Alan Rusbridger, at the time the editor of the paper, justified the effort:
“[I] do have an urge to do something powerful, focused and important with the Guardian while I’m still here. And it will be about climate change.
Sometimes there’s a story so enormous that conventional journalism struggles to cope with it, never mind do justice. The imminent threat to the species is the most existentially important story any of us could imagine telling — for our sakes, for our children and for their children. But, as journalists, we also know that we sometimes tire of telling, and that people tire of reading.”
That was four years ago.
Today, the growing share of social in the Western media diet has changed the game. News media is pushed to be somehow, in coherence with the background noise from social. This calibration is often done at the expense of accuracy and balance.
Last year, Pew Research found that 68 percent of Americans get, at least occasionally, their news on social media. The interesting thing is that, at the same time, 57 percent say they expect the news they see on social media to be largely inaccurate. In other words, “We know that what we find on social is mostly crap, but we can’t help looking at it”.
As a result, social media set the tone. For climate change, for the Yellow Vest movement. Hence the growing role of influencers across a wide spectrum of outlets and platforms.
How does an influencer-led model differ from a journalistic one?
- Revenue system: Commercial influencers derive their revenue from their relationship to brands, through sponsored posts or affiliated programs. In the first case, they get paid for their promotion of a product; in the second case, they collect a cut on the sales they help to generate. In the United States, an FTC regulation imposes a minimal disclosure of commercial endorsements. But as a generally accepted practice, the influencer never pays for a product they promote.
- Production process. Quantity and a lack of details rule the editorial process for influencers. Their priority is to churn out content as fast as they can to feed the click-machine and garner greater attention. By contrast, at least in theory, the process of writing a journalistic piece is supposed to be more rigorous, with a chain of production involving multiple layers of editors and sometimes fact-checkers, along with strict rules when it comes with dealing with brands.
Because they are the product, influencers for a cause do not, in principle, suffer from the same potential level of corruption as the commercial ones. Or at least it is more insidious and discreet. It would be for instance inappropriate to ask the Thunberg family who foot the bill for the train tickets and weeks-long European tours or if they collect something from the fame of their perturbed offspring. This is not the kind of information you will find in the glowing coverage of their sympathetic journey.
