Last year, I was introduced to the board game iMAgiNiff. The game tasks players with answering questions such as, “Imagine if [insert player’s name] were a country, what would he/she be?”
Recently, I’ve been thinking, “Imagine if a photojournalist from the 1950s had Instagram, what would the photojournalist do with it?”
I definitely don’t claim to be a photojournalist, but I am a journalist – and I did just sign up for an account on the popular photo-sharing app. While I use my personal account for non-journalistic photos, I also made an account for Cedars (the student news organization at my college), even though I have not posted any photos with that account yet (I mostly made it to snatch up our “CedarsatCU” handle before it was taken.)
But I do wonder if I should actively use Instagram for Cedars and how to do so. I follow several news organizations, and this is how I’ve seen they use the app:
To engage the community with news-related hashtags: Many of the organizations I follow create hashtags specific to their organization and to a specific event for readers to use with their own photos. For example, the Huffington Post created the hashtag #HPL2012 for their followers to use for photos from local polling places on Election Day. They said they then might use these photos on their Huffington Post Live site.
To request user-generated content with very soft news-related hashtags: Sometimes news organizations want readers to share content related to a hashtag that is less than serious. USA Today recently used the hashtag #mustachemoment to ask users to share photos of their mustaches grown during No-Shave November.
To highlight the work of individual journalists: Reuters recently posted a photo of a French couple kissing during a thunderstorm in an Ukrainian stadium while a Euro 2012 soccer match was put on hold because of the weather. Photographer Michael Buholzer took the photo. In addition, a CNN senior editor in Asia, Tyson Wheatley, has a very popular Instagram account that he uses to post photos of life in Hong Kong.
In light of this, I have to ask: Imagine if every newspaper printed all their photos with a soft, Instagram-y filter, what would that say of the state of photojournalism? How much should the media use filters when posting Instagram photos?
I’m still thinking through how to best use the app for Cedars. How do you think news organizations and individual journalists should use Instagram?
All Instagram(tm) logos and trademarks displayed on this website are property of Instagram, Inc.
Zack Anderson 