Clowning around in Journalism

Abstract

Traditional legacy media have found themselves between a rock and a hard place —struggling to find their foothold with younger audiences and at the same time, forced to adapt to the demands of the industry minimizing the presence of local journalism. While social media has proven itself to be a means of connecting journalists to audiences, it is still unclear who is truly seeking out these journalists. The dominant perspectives on how social media could help address the challenges journalism faces today have been primarily preoccupied with how social media is used by traditional legacy media to connect with audiences. This study instead turns to social media environments where the people are seeking to connect to their local news through a well-known social media page in Calgary, yyc.clowns (now known as yycwave). The Instagram page has sustained a large following since 2019 and experimented with several types of content but has consistently remained a source of news for its large following, providing coverage and reporting on major stories of interest within Calgary. Through a discourse analysis of six news posts made by the account, this study seeks to answer how yyc.clowns defines the practices of local journalism, situating it as a viable source of news for its followers. This project consists of a video essay exploring the findings alongside a written literature review and discussion. The Instagram page acts as a liaison between its audience and legacy media, borrowing directly from legacy media news sources to deliver timely coverage of local topics of interest. This opens up the horizon for understanding how these popular social media accounts act as intermediaries allowing audiences that may not engage with legacy media to still receive news of relatively high quality.