Local Journalism on Instagram. A guide for local media workers

Scientific Essay from the year 2022 in the subject Communications - Public Relations, Advertising, Marketing, Social Media, grade: 1,3, Vrije University Brussel (Social Sciences), course: Journalism Trends & Technologies, language: English, abstract: This paper deals with the local journalistic use of Instagram. In times of declining print circulation and advertising revenues, local journalism is in deep crisis across countries. Yet, local journalism plays a relevant role in the fight against fake news and white-collar crime and has a relevant function in Western democracies that needs to be preserved. A major problem local news has to deal with is the fact that it no longer reaches young people. On the one hand, people under 29 hardly use local journalistic offers and on the other hand, they hardly read print products. For years, local newspapers have relied on the distribution of news content on Facebook. However, young people are less and less active on Facebook. The platform of the younger generation is currently Instagram. Social media, which is geared towards visual and audiovisual content, can offer local news an opportunity to distribute editorially produced content to a younger target group. This white paper outlines why the existence and future of local media outlets are relevant, why Instagram could play a relevant role in this and how Instagram has been used in local journalism so far. Furthermore, arguments for and against an intensive focus of local journalism on Instagram are presented, and possible future scenarios are