The Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas, in partnership with UNESCO, has been at the forefront of a year-long exploration into what the rise of influencers, or digital content creators, means for the news media industry.
This multi-faceted project culminated this week with the Nov. 18 launch of a free online course about how digital content creators and journalists can become trusted voices online. More than 8,000 people from 149 countries have already registered for this free multilingual course, “Digital Content Creators and Journalists: How to be a Trusted Voice Online.”
There’s still time to register for the course, which continues through Dec. 15 and is available in English, French, Portuguese and Spanish.
“Almost everywhere I turn, I see a new study or story or social media post about how influencers are changing journalism, which to me just shows how timely and relevant and valuable our project is,” said Summer Harlow, associate director of the Knight Center and project coordinator. “This is more than just a trending topic, though. News influencers–what we’ve been calling newsfluencers–are doing exciting, innovative things with news and audience relationships, and journalists can learn a lot from them. And vice versa!”
The day the online course started, a new survey from Pew Research Center found that about one-in-five people in the United States say they regularly get news from news influencers on social media.
The initiative from the Knight Center and UNESCO expands on this by asking what journalists and content creators can learn from each other.
Also as part of the initiative, in October 2024, the Knight Center published the open-access e-book “Content Creators and Journalists: Redefining News and Credibility in the Digital Age.” It’s an edited collection of lessons and observations from digital creators and journalists from around the world, and sheds light on the emerging importance of influencers in the evolving news media landscape. The e-book is available to download for free in English, Portuguese and Spanish.
The e-book includes reflections from the journalists, content creators, and climate activists who worked side-by-side in a unique youth, multimedia newsroom to cover UNESCO’s 31st World Press Freedom Day conference in Santiago, Chile, from May 2 to 4, 2024. The coverage from this experimental newsroom is available online.
The Knight Center-UNESCO project on newsfluencers began with an all-day roundtable discussion between influencers and journalists who met April 11, 2024, in Austin, Texas, sharing their experiences in content creation and news reporting. That same weekend, some of the participants from the roundtable spoke on the panel “Influencers/content creators and journalists: What can they learn from each other?” at the Knight Center’s 25th International Symposium on Online Journalism (ISOJ). Reflections from the roundtable and panel are also shared in the e-book.
In recognition of the global focus on how content creators are impacting journalism, the Knight Center and UNESCO have made the content from each phase of the project available to view or download for free: https://bit.ly/3UHeibc.
“We are grateful to our partners at UNESCO’s headquarters in Paris who have worked tirelessly with us on this pioneering and relevant project,” said professor Rosental Calmon Alves, founder and director of the Knight Center. “I highly recommend everybody interested in the rapid changes in the media download our e-book and join more than 8,000 journalists, scholars, communicators etc from around the world who are taking this course. It’s an amazing global community of learning!”
