CHIYO ROBERTSON: As tech titans reshape the media landscape, our storytelling skills must shift

In the fast-changing global media landscape, technology giants are shaking things up — Elon Musk is overhauling Twitter, TikTok is on track for about $10bn in revenue in 2022 and Meta is morphing into a virtual world of avatars. Amid these moves, journalists are having to adapt.

Almost a decade ago, as Brazil’s economy went into free fall, I commissioned the BBC’s new multiplatform video journalist in São Paulo to report on the country’s economic woes. The journalist had spotted graffiti in the favelas capturing the frustration of young jobless Brazilians and, with a compact digital camera and laptop, he swiftly got to work. From São Paulo and London we combined vibrant street art and simple text, ditching the traditional rules of TV — it was the first digital video for business programmes on BBC World News.

The shift to more experimental storytelling has been fuelled by the growth of social media and changing news habits, and with it an explosion of user-generated content. The pandemic further accelerated this digital shift, as we consumed more content than ever from home. Today, social media is an important part of our news diet. A Pew Research Centre report in 2022 found that half of US adults dip into social networks for news.

When the BBC first mulled a TikTok channel it worried that short quirky videos would dilute the world’s biggest news brand. It was Russia’s attack on Ukraine that finally triggered its move. In a sea of disinformation, the BBC wanted to engage global audiences, including Ukrainians and Russians.

A survey of young people’s news consumption by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism (RISJ) and Craft shows how their habits are an extension of wider media behaviour for digital natives. But myriad factors interact to influence how and why they consume news.

How should the media industry react to this fragmented landscape? Nic Newman, RISJ Senior Research Associate, says mainstream brands cannot please everyone all of the time but can adopt an “as well as, not instead of” strategy by investing in formats, products and skills for social platforms.

A blended approach is vital, says Valentina Park at The News Movement in New York. She targets young audiences through different social networks and urges journalists to reimagine news and “go to where new audiences are”.

Social app Clubhouse is only two years old and is being widely used by Iranians to discuss news and opinions within its borders and with the diaspora, having escaped the worst of Iran’s social media crackdown.

Meanwhile Musk’s plan to charge for verification and ease content moderation has spooked users and the world’s biggest advertisers, who are fretting about brand safety. It has also revived interest in Twitter alternatives. One of those is Mastodon, a social ecosystem where a cheery elephant replaces the little bird and people’s posts are toots not tweets.

The social media boom has led to an epidemic of fake news, but disinformation campaigns date back to the Roman Empire. Today the battle is on the digital front-line. One in five TikTok videos contained misinformation, according to news tracking site NewsGuard.

While news leaders, governments and social media platforms are creating dedicated teams to tackle the viral spread of fake news, greater collaboration will strengthen their impact.

Skills in the disinformation age will be one of the themes at the first Global Media Congress in Abu Dhabi in November as part of a series of Media Labs focusing on the challenges and opportunities of digital innovation.

The stakes are high. Reuters’ 2022 Digital News report showed the pandemic’s positive effect on consumption and trust —  which soared during Covid-19 as people demanded reliable content — was short lived. Just one year later, consumption and trust in TV and print media news plummeted. On top of that, audiences switched off depressing stories and younger people avoided stories they found hard to understand.

Business and economics news has always been a hard sell for younger audiences, who find it jargon-strewn and often unrelatable. But as the Ukraine conflict pushes up energy prices and the cost of living around the world, money news has never been more important. So, what can we do about news avoidance? For starters — simplify language, break down complex stories and put scary numbers into context.

While training BBC Africa business journalists earlier in 2022, I asked them to explain inflation TikTok-style on their mobiles to an imaginary friend or child, to make the story relatable. 

Creative industry leaders, from gaming to drama companies, discussed best practice in climate storytelling at the BBC Academy’s Climate Creatives festival in October. “Don’t preach, be practical” was their message. Another approach is solutions journalism using human-centred narratives.

In the age of fake news, using data at the heart of your story is vital. Data journalism is not new — Florence Nightingale created infographics about the welfare of British soldiers back in 1858. Today journalists can weave data into their stories in novel and creative ways.

An experimental approach, embracing new platforms and being creative with data will help build a resilient newsroom, capable of creating content that can engage diverse audiences, fight disinformation and attract tweets and toots.

From a digital experiment using Favela graffiti to a TikTok explainer about the Ukraine war — as our news habits evolve, so must our storytelling skills.

• Robertson created and implemented a training programme for BBC Africa business colleagues in Nairobi.