Information needs to be accessible, full stop. How are people supposed to understand the stakes and get on board if we’re talking in code or only covering climate in paywalled newspapers? Our task as water communicators is to make our issues irresistible.
Traditional media’s challenges
Local news has been declining for decades, and more than half of U.S. counties have limited access to local news, and 75% of “rigorous” journalism lives behind paywalls. This information vacuum has opened the door for the right to fill the void with conservative influencers, podcasts, and other new sources racking up views and pushing harmful narratives.
While we need reliable, original reporting, most people don’t have the means or motivation to pay for news. Furthermore, the average person reads at a 6th-grade level, and The New York Times rates at an 11th grade level. So how do we educate and engage people around our issues? We can’t just rely on the press and our owned channels.
Creators: Messengers for a new age of media
According to Pew’s recent research, more than half of people get their news from social media. With the rise of short-form video, there has been an explosion of information shared online. While that has increased the spread of mis- and disinformation in some cases, it’s also made space for passionate people with unique life experiences to share their perspectives on the news of the day.
Creators can carry power to humanize current events. Take the Line 3 oil pipeline fight and the work of Giiwedin, an Ojibwe water protector, as an example. They took off on TikTok, sharing videos of their experiences from the resistance camp. Their videos shed light on how fossil fuels threaten Indigenous lifeways and sacred practices. They gave audiences a front-row seat to what was happening on the ground. And they mobilized a new generation of people to get involved. Social media gave Indigenous folks a platform to tell stories on their terms. When traditional media sometimes underrepresents Indigenous voices, it became an invaluable tool.
Youth, low-income people, and people of color are more likely to get their news from influencers (a.k.a. creators). Additionally, 65% of people who look to influencers for news say they’ve helped them better understand current events and civic issues. Creators reach people poorly served by mainstream news media.
Working together to bridge the information divide
I’ve worked with celebrities, influencers, and now creators for a long time, and I was inspired after attending a High Country News panel discussion, The Social Shift: Content Creators, New Voices, and the Future of News. Speakers included Teal Lehto, a Colorado River advocate (@westernwatergirl); Indigenous creator, Birdie Sam (@showme_yourmask); and media literacy champion, Kelsey Russell (@kelscruss). We’ve been fortunate to partner with Teal to join a Colorado River media briefing and videos to promote the Inflation Reduction Act’s benefits for the Basin. It was refreshing to hear about how some creators are being invited to work directly with journalists to translate their reporting to a social media audience.
The moderator, a journalism and public interest communications professor at University of Washington, shared how partnering with creators is an important part of educating the public because trust in the press is in a free fall, social giants like Meta and X have ditched fact-checking, not to mention AI eroding trust even further. People also enjoy hearing from interesting, informed people who humanize an issue or make learning more accessible and fun!
Journalism and creators can have a symbiotic relationship. Teal shared how she doesn’t do original reporting and relies on combing through news articles. She works with journalists at High Country News to fact-check scripts for their collaborations.
Creators can also be useful partners to debunk mis- and disinformation circulating in the media and virally on social channels. For example, Restore the Delta worked with @jasonjourneyman to educate audiences about the false information being peddled by the Trump administration about turning the “valve” back on for California’s water. What he did was cite relevant news sources and debunk the falsehoods while educating people about California’s water infrastructure.
TL;DR, journalism plays a vital role in covering current events, and creators help make the news more interesting and accessible by putting it in their own words and distilling big ideas into bite-sized content. Keeping communities informed and involved in water and climate will require us to work across mediums and platforms. And, if we want to preempt harmful narratives and seed stories of hope, we need to invest long-term in accessible storytelling that can reach a wider audience.
We’ve learned a lot from our creator collaborations here at the Water Hub. They’ve helped us raise awareness for everything from the human right to water and sanitation, to investments in green infrastructure, to the Line 3 fight. We plan to deepen our relationships in 2025 and are excited to share our continued learnings with you later this year. Until then, you can learn more about how to work with influencers in this blog post and guide.
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