#Fad: Hashtags are useless in print (and in general)
If you write the phrase "#MeToo" on a piece of paper, can you click on it? Can other people find your sheet of paper by using the hashtag?
We all know the answer to these questions is no - so why do hashtags appear in print in newspapers?
There are two kinds of people who are under the faddish spell of hashtags, and they are especially likely to be newspaper editors. The first is the sort who doesn't really get social media but has a somewhat muddled sense of hashtags being the hip thing. The other is the Twitter obsessive.
The problem with the former is obvious. The solution is to get down to the fundamentals of editing - does using a hashtag in print better inform, clarify the copy or ease the burden on the reader? (No, not really and definitely not.)
For the latter - which may include you, reader! - the key is to remember, as we always should, that journalists work for an audience. Many newspaper readers have actively chosen to not seek news via social media. Needless hashtags will not impress this audience, not that they should impress anyone.
A widely read op-ed in the New York Times this month included a graphic on global social media use. Twitter's total user base was given as 330 million. That's the same as Reddit, and no one would ape Reddit's inpenetrable presentation in a newspaper article.
What's more, Twitter's total users were similar to those of LinkedIn (303 million) and Snapchat (287 million). In a whole other league is a service you may not have heard of called TikTok (500 million).
Meanwhile, a Gallup poll last year found just over a quarter of Americans have a Twitter account and only 8% follow prolific and powerful user U.S. President Donald Trump. But more than three-quarters of Americans, the poll suggests, are aware of Trump's tweets.
What does that mean? Few of us are on Twitter. Those who are don't care to follow Trump, even though he is likely the biggest single source of news-making posts in Twitter's history, and may well be the biggest single source of news Twitter ever will have. And anything important that happens on Twitter will make its way off social media for those who don't use the site.
The social media backlash is undeniable. People have put too much of themselves online and got too little in return. The same could be said of society as a whole. Newspapers once held the place social media fills today, from informing the populace to delivering advertisements to introducing new audiences to everything from comic strips to concert reviews. The industry may one day reclaim its primacy in some of those roles.
Let we in journalism be proud that we are not Facebook or Twitter, and let the first step be the rejection of the faddish, cloying use of hashtags outside of their realm.
Of course, if you like hashtags, you can find me on Twitter here.
|
CONTACT
Feel free to email me at JUSTIN@MEETJUSTINHOLMES.COM or use the quick form below:
|
|
|
