INSTAGRAM UNEASY INFO-ENCER : MASTER GLOBAL ESSAY

Instagram's uneasy role as a news site. But more turning to this platform even as it makes changes to dampen political posts. '' People are very critical and cynical about information they're getting from traditional outlets.''

'' It resonates where this guy on Instagram is breaking down the news.''

Mosheh Oinounou, a former producer for CBS, Bloomberg News and Fox News, is part of a crop of personalities who have figured out how to package information and deliver it on Instagram, increasingly turning the social platform into a force in news.

Many millennials and Gen X-ers, in an echo of how older generation used Facebook, have grown more comfortable reading news on Instagram and reposting posts and videos for friends on Instagram Stories, which disappear after 24 hours.

INSTAGRAM, which is owned by Meta, is an increasingly important news outlet in the year's U.S. presidential election.

As of last year,16 percent of U.S. adults regularly got news on Instagram, outpacing TikTok, X and Reddit, and up from 8 percent in 2018, according to PEW Research. More than half of that group were women.

News influencers have become popular on Instagram even as the platform has tried de-emphasizing political content. Instagram and its sister platform Facebook, have been plagued by accusations of spreading misinformation and inflaming political debates. 

Adam Mosseri, the head of Instagram, has been averse to the app's teaming up with or promoting news accounts.

This month, Mr Mosseri said Instagram would not recommend ''political content'' across different parts of the app unless users opted in to seeing it. 

The platform said political content included posts that were ''potentially related to things like laws, elections or social topics.''

In the week after Mosseri's announcement, news accounts experienced a decline in shares, comments, likes, reach and video views, according to an analysis by Dash Hudson, a social media management firm.

Shares of posts from 70 major news accounts on Instagram, including The Times and NPR, fell 26 percent week over week on average, the firm found.

Traditional news organizations, including The New York Times, have large Instagram feeds where they share reporting, but these news accounts hold a different appeal and have become more visible in recent years.

They curate content like old-school blogs and talk to the camera like TikTok and YouTube influencers. 

They source headlines from many major outlets while adding their own analysis. They talk with followers in comments and via direct messages, using the feedback and questions to shape additional posts. Many promise to be nonpartisan.

'' For many people, they have the chefs that they trust, the doctors they trust and then there's a category of news and information they trust, '' said Jessica Yellin, a former chief White House correspondent for CNN.

Ms. Yellin, who has more than 650,000 followers on her news Instagram account, calls herself an  ''info-encer.''

The Essay Publishing continues. The World Students Society thanks authors Sapna Maheshwari and Mike Isaac.