Social media is a great way for people to communicate and have conversations about the activities going on around the world. News media outlets are using the tools of social media to further interact with their audience and provide more information on subjects of interest.
The Instagram accounts I looked into during this exercise were KETV, WOWT, ABC News, CBS News, and CNN. What I found interesting about CNN was the lack of coverage on the democratic debate as compared to ABC and CBS. CNN looks like its Instagram focuses more on small stories that maybe haven’t fully developed yet or just don’t fit into their normal TV programming.
On the local side of things, KETV and WOWT seem to be going about the use of their social media platform very differently from one another. KETV seems to be putting out more fun things such as Fursday to engage their audience and humanize themselves. KETV’s Instagram also appears to have a lot of posts about animals. WOWT seems to be using the platform to push people to watch the broadcast by advertising upcoming stories. Between the two local channels, they both appear to receive similar amounts of attention with KETV possibly getting slightly more views.
That being said, KETV appears to get a lot more interaction via comments from the community as compared to WOWT. In my opinion, getting people to comment is a lot more important as it shows people are interested enough to add their thoughts to the conversation instead of just looking at an article.
The comments on the local news and national news are by far show the greatest difference. National news site comments were concerningly crazy. Conspiracy theories and extremely toxic comments are posted everywhere. I find it very concerning and wonder if commenting on these sites may not be useful or even advisable.
None of the sites appeared to show or post anything inappropriate and aligned themselves with the audience and typical content they televise.
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MAV Research 