Twitter is one of the, if not most, used social media platforms to break news and share information. I know that I mainly use Twitter for that purpose alone. Therefore, I believed using Twitter to cover the 2020 election was going to be quite easy.

When we were assigned Twitter as our social media platform for the election I thought we were handed a cake-walk of an assignment compared to the other students’ platforms. I did not realize, though, the planning and credibility that was involved in every Tweet so that our audience was properly informed. Twitter is arguably the most valuable tool for breaking news and trending topics in today’s modern world, but what is never seen is the effort that goes into making the platform’s content worth of a post. We proofread each post and reworked writing to sound more natural, and then sent it for approval to the group to make sure it was worth a post and ensure we did not create a duplicate story from a different account manager. Overall, it took an enormous amount of communication and teamwork to create. 

Examining other group’s media platforms, I am still not sold on the functionality of Facebook Live as a news platform. It seems too time consuming to create when most consumers just want the bullet points. Instagram is a valuable tool for journalists if it is used correctly. The most important part of the post is obviously a high quality, relevant, and interesting image that draws an audiences’ attention to the comments for more information. I personally enjoy pop culture news on Instagram because of its ability to show related pictures or videos with ease.

Overall, I would put Twitter as the main hard news media platform with Instagram filling more of an entertainment news role. In the future we are sure to see other platforms take the center-stage such as Snapchat or TikTok, and we can only imagine what their value could be.