Image via Complex Original
What started out as a class project between three Stanford University students in 2011 has blossomed into a $19 billion business, and while many words come to mind when thinking about the yellow app we all love — or love to hate — there is one phrase not many people think about when it comes to Snapchat: political journalism. Even 2016 presidential candidate Hillary Clinton is using the rapid photo sharing service to keep her followers up-to-date on her life and her bid, signaling that this little internet service is starting to transcend the usual generational gap that usually comes with new media.
Snapchat isn’t new to the editorial world. Earlier in the year, they introduced the “Discover” widget, a feature that delivers daily content from big-name publications like CNN, VICE, ESPN, and Cosmopolitan Magazine (to name a few) to users in a short, sweet, and to-the-point manner. Though general consensus with millennials was that Discover was totally useless to people who mainly use Snapchat just to take and share impromptu selfies, the move showed that the innovators over at the Los Angeles-based company are ready to experiment, and even change, the way people consume information. Particularly, news.
So how in the world is Snapchat rising to such great news lengths so quickly, when it took other social platforms so long just to even get the cosign of one reputable media entity or politician?
It’s live and instantaneous.
Before a few years ago, people scoffed at the idea of sharing photos and videos that only lasted for a few seconds. Now, the quicker and the shorter the content, the better. (Who has time to read a whole article anymore, right?) You can chalk that up to the shrinking attention spans of young people on the web. Studies show that more and more people are spending less and less time on a single web page in favor of skimming for the most important information (15 seconds, according to experts) and instead of fighting it, Snapchat is capitalizing on it with its one of a kind way of sharing photos and videos that last for only a few seconds at a time.
They’re literally reinventing the tools journalists are using to report things.
In May, Snapchat announced that they were hiring a team of journalists to cover the 2016 U.S. presidential race, and though many skeptics see that as an odd thing, you have to admit, the implications of using it as a tool to document what could be a history-making election (especially with candidates like Clinton and Jeb Bush vying for the title) are pretty damn exciting.
Live snaps from the Democratic and Republican National Conventions? Instant Snap results as soon as presidential party candidates are announced? A live story from different polling places all over the country on election day? Yes to all of it!
Everyday users (not just journalists) can join in on the news, where and when it happens.
Although content is ultimately aggregated and moderated from a Snapchat staffer, everyday people have the ability to join in on content creation with the use of location-based stories, or live photo and video feeds based on geographic locations and events. Traditional news on other forms of social media only lets you see and read the points-of-view of people you already know/follow. Snapchat gives you the exactly what someone else is seeing through their smart phone device, someone you wouldn’t have even knew existed outside of the app.
It takes what would usually be boring news, and makes it entertaining.
With their new, instant sharing model, Snapchat inadvertently also created a form of social media millennials didn’t even know they needed — global, live, short-form storytelling. The coolest thing about Snapchat is that you can literally see what is going on in a certain place and time without having to actually be there and in a mobile, quick-fire way. Live streams are too long. Live tweets and other online editorial content are simply not visual enough. Snapchat is the perfect balance to experience something from afar and absorb the most relevant information. And the real-world implications of this are endless.
While we still have yet to see the widespread fruits of labor from so-called “Snapchat journalism,” it’s an exciting prospect to think about how people will use the app to cover the rat race to the White House. While it won’t certainly replace in-depth, detailed stories, Snapchat can take over the media in new ways other are just to slow to do. Young people are already on their phones 24/7, so why not use some of that time to educate yourself about what’s going on in the world? Even if just for a few snappy seconds.
