More Americans now get their news directly from social media than from any other source, and roughly one in five Americans get their news regularly from creators—a number that’s even higher with younger audiences.
Meanwhile, audiences are declining for most traditional journalism outlets.
Though many journalists are leaving traditional newsrooms and becoming independent creators, they are not the leading information sharers on social platforms. Most news creators don’t come from traditional newsrooms, according to Pew Research Center. While this means that they may not have some of the experience and skills ingrained in journalists in newsrooms, like fact-checking and sourcing, they are bringing other talents and approaches to their work that resonate with audiences.
Journalists should take note of some of the strategies news creators do to build and keep audiences that increasingly avoid mainstream news brands:
- They create engaging and entertaining content in formats many audiences prefer.
- They use authenticity to develop a personal connection between audience and creator.
- They repeatedly lay out why they should be trusted by sharing their background or credentials, and they engage regularly with audience questions that hold them accountable.
Making engaging content
Creators on social media often present complex issues in bite-sized, palatable formats – like a 280-character X post or a 10-minute TikTok video. News creators tend to speak to their audience as though they were explaining an issue or topic to a friend, using everyday colloquial instead of formal writing and bureaucratic jargon.
They often add flair to their delivery, using props, green screens with visuals, trending sounds and inside jokes on the app or memorable signatures to make their videos stand out. For example, @underthedesknews, where V Spehar presents news updates while lying down under a desk – an antidote to the traditional over-the-desk evening TV news anchor delivery. Cleo Abram, who shares information and news about technology, opens every video with a catchy “Look at this” and utilizes videos and graphics to make complex topics more engaging.
Carlos Espina, @carlos_eduardo_espina, often uses a green screen to share immigration news in Spanish with his audience.
Feeling like ‘a close friend’
News creators also engage their audiences by trying to build genuine social connections with them.
A July Nieman Reports article explores what creators do to make audiences “feel like a close friend,” through their tone and style. TikTok and YouTube influencers often speak in a direct-to-camera style that makes it feel like they’re speaking right to the viewer.
Take, for instance, @nikitadumptruck, who shares news “for the girls,” breaking down geopolitics in simple terms while doing her make up or walking down the street.
They share glimpses of their personal lives – from delivering information from their bedroom to wearing casual clothes and interspersing posts with personal information with their informational posts. Caroline Collins, a local TV news anchor, shares some of the behind the scenes of her at work and in her personal life.
Research has shown that this perceived authenticity and connection help influencers with marketing other products and brands to their audiences – and marketing their informational content to audiences is no different.
Building trust
The most important thing creators do better than traditional journalists, though, is building trust.
A 2024 Gallup poll found that 69% of adults in the U.S. said they have no or not very much trust and confidence in mass media.
Julia Angwin dug into how news creators build trust with audiences through “ability, benevolence, and integrity” in a report for the Shorenstein Institute. While journalists can lean on the reach and legacy from their organization, she writes, news creators need to build it from the start in an environment where trust is naturally low.
To achieve this, according to Angwin, some news creators share information about topics they have formal credentials in—a doctor talking about health, for example. And video creators often lay out their credentials in every video they make.
“Most newsrooms prize reporters skilled in the processes of journalism—cultivating sources, verifying information and writing quickly and concisely—but this type of expertise is not transparent to the public,” she writes.
News creators also engage directly with their audiences more than journalists typically do – responding directly to comments and questions. It often means they respond directly to concerns or criticisms about the integrity of their content. This stands in stark contrast to how journalists handle comments – often disabling them under articles or having them addressed by separate audience development teams in the newsroom.
Creators are also expected to disclose paid partnerships in their content and are often policed by their audiences. If creators don’t follow these rules of transparency, their audience will complain publicly in comments, replies, stitched videos, Instagram stories or on other platforms, forcing some honesty and accountability. While journalism organizations often have internal guardrails to maintain ethics and the quality of information – those mechanisms are not easily seen by audiences.
A 2019 study from the Center for Media Engagement at the University of Texas at Austin done on behalf of Trusting News found adding a box explaining your story process can improve a user’s perceptions of a news organization, demonstrating that the process of transparency does indeed build trust with audiences.
Combatting misinformation
Many news creators have built their platforms from the ground up with a focus of serving their audiences – and it’s clearly paid off.
The question remains whether news creators can become reliable sources of information for those growing audiences or whether they will further the rapid spread of misinformation online.
According to a UNESCO study, 62 percent of creators surveyed said they don’t vet the accuracy of content before sharing it with their followers – a concerning statistic.
“The prevalent lack of rigorous critical evaluation of information highlights an urgent need to enhance creators’ media and information literacy skills, including identifying and using reliable fact-checking resources,” the UNESCO study notes.
Many of the platforms where creators share their work have weak guardrails to prevent the spread of misinformation, leaving it more up to the individual creator and their audience to ensure their information is accurate. There’s also been several reports over the past few years detailing the influence of dark money, from political groups and foreign countries, in the content creator world.
If news creators can harness tools like sourcing, verification and continue to build transparency into their work, they can become powerful vehicles for information sharing vital to a healthy democracy. What remains to be seen is if traditional journalists and information-sharing creators can come together to fight misinformation in this constantly evolving information-sharing economy.