Maya

Olesen 1 Formatted: Tab stops: 3.25", Centered + 6.5", Right +

WP1 Paper Not at 5.85"
News and Political Commentary on Maya Olesen
Joshua Smith
Writing 2
Writing Project 1 Portfolio
8 December 2019
Instagram News Posts: The Genre Behind It Formatted: Indent: First line: 0", Line spacing:
Multiple 1.08 li
Instagram is one of the largest social media platforms and millions of posts are
Formatted: Indent: First line: 0"

uploadsuploaded each day, leavingreaching millions of posts to be commented on by others

around people. News outlets use the world.reach of Instagram comments is relatively new form

of genre but has been around for years. Millions of people around the world use this social media

platform to share to their experiences and actions, many companies even use it to get information

out to advantage to keep people, such as news station. News outlets create Instagram pages and

post content relating to up to date with current events. These posts allow people to comment

their thoughts and opinions and engage in discussions in the comments with others. Political and

news comments specifically on Instagram have theirBuzzfeed News has an account where they

post a variety of news, whether it is the death of celebrities or political news.1 The style of

writing for the caption of the posts on Buzzfeed News is its own form ofgenre. The genre with

specific of Buzzfeed News captions have there own conventions in the writing specific to only

Buzzfeed and prior to the invention of Instagram these comments were done inthere was

different formsways to which the news was released, which is the antecedent.

BuzzFeed Inc. n.d. Instagram. Accessed December 5, 2019. https://www.instagram.com/buzzfeednews/.

 Maya
Olesen 2 Formatted: Tab stops: 3.25", Centered + 6.5", Right +
WP1 Paper Not at 5.85"
For one to understand To have an understanding of how something works theythe terms must

understand the definitions behind itbe known and understood. Genre can be defined in a

multitude of ways depending on the person. Janet Boyd for instance defines a genre as

“perpetually loose: when the traits or attributes considered normal to or typical of a particular

kind of creative piece, such as in literature, film, or music, make it that kind and not another.”2

My definition for a genre differs slightly differs from Boyd’s by, however, being that a genre is a

categorical placement of the type of writing or piece of work, through the common similarities in

the style. Instagram comments, for example, have their own genre of writing, but depending on

the post it can differ. Instagram comments on news postsdiction, format, and news accounts have

a specific type of genre.often times the overall tone of the work. Genre convention in my

definition is the way of writing inspecific to the specific genre, meaning what are the normal

actions when writing in the genre. For example, if in the genre people would always write an

emoji, thengenre and by looking at this is part of the genre’s convention.you can usually place

the work in a genre. The conventions of a genre can range from so many things like the writing

being in columns to the work having symbols. An antecedent genre is the genre of writing that

came before the said genre, so in this case it iswould be the type writing that camegenre before

the “new” genre came to be. A Buzzfeed News could post on Instagram. The last definition

needed to understand this essay is rhetoric situation, which is where there is an audience, a

writer, and a topic in a situation that could possibly happen.

News accounts and news post’s comments are often written showing people’s political

views and emotions to the news. The rhetoric situation for this scenario if Buzzfeed News were

2
“Rhetoric.” The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition. 2003. Houghton Mifflin
Company, n.d. Web. 24 July 2009.
 Maya
Olesen 3 Formatted: Tab stops: 3.25", Centered + 6.5", Right +
WP1 Paper Not at 5.85"
to post a political picture, such as a United Nations meeting, people’s reactions in the comments

will either be negative or positive. The genre of their comments will be formatted in a more

political emotion to the situation. The comment is likely to be a person showing their support for

the United Nations meeting and commenting on how they think they are handling a situation. On

posts that are more politically based comments are more structured to politics and the views of

the commenters. News Instagram pages are more likely to have comments that are more formal

opposed to how many other types of pages have comments that are extremely informal.

Comments on news report posts some people want other to comment back and have actual

discussions in the comments to talk about their political views, though this is not the case for

everyone. In other types of Instagram posts people will often write very informal and use more

emojis unlike in news posts where people are more formal because the subject matter is different

than the common post on Instagram.

The antecedent genre of the comments on news through writing letters or being vocal

about their views. In the past before Instagram was even around people would not be about to

comment on a post instantly for millions to be able to see it. Politics and news have always been

important, and people have always had an opinion on it. Before things like Instagram people

would have more face to face conversations with people to discuss the news and politics. Having

these discussions in person is similar to having conversation in the comments to discuss the

viewpoint of others, however on Instagram the discussion can be with a total stranger, while the

in-person discussion would likely occur with someone the person knows. Letters are also an

example of an antecedent genre because people would write back and forth to tell each other

about their ideas and opinions on news. The founding fathers did similar methods to discuss their

views on the political matters and other news. They would write letters to one another and voice
 Maya
Olesen 4 Formatted: Tab stops: 3.25", Centered + 6.5", Right +
WP1 Paper Not at 5.85"
their opinions in the letters for the others to hear or they would all gather together in conventions

and voice their opinions out loud and face-to-face. The differences between the old genre and the

“new” genre of commenting on Instagram posts that in the old genre there is more direct and

human interactions. The interactions for the old genre were also more likely to between people

who knew each other unlike on Instagram where you can be talking to a stranger. The

similarities between the genres are few, but there are that in both old and new people were able

to voice their opinions on the subject and have discussions with people to see their viewpoint

apart from their own. Prior to Instagram comments and discussions on news and political matters

would be done through letter or in face-to-face meetings with people, whether just friendly or

formal.

When using Instagram, I have come across heated debates among numerous individuals

on posts about politics and/or news. People have very strong opinions and usually will make

their opinion known in the comments. Various people will join in on a debate in the comments to

either take sides or make counterarguments. Even though debates take place in the comments

these debates are not formal and can be very emotional based. These discussions usually start by

someone writing a comment and then someone replying to the comment sparking a discussion of

each other’s opinions. Since the discussion is happening on Instagram people’s comments and

replies can get aggressive and emotional toward the other party. These discussions or debates can

go on for dozens of comments and can last hours. Sometimes these debates only occur between

two people, but usually others will join in. These debates can be very nonfactual because the

parties to not know the proper information making these debates informal and more emotionally

based. Heated debated that take place in the comment section of news and political posts are

often times informal and emotionally, which in itself is a genre of writing.

 Maya
Olesen 5 Formatted: Tab stops: 3.25", Centered + 6.5", Right +
WP1 Paper Not at 5.85"
News and politics can be very opinionated subjects and on Instagram people are able to

have discussions and comments on these matters. Comments on news and political posts tend to

be more formal as opposed to other Instagram post comments. Debates can occur in the

comments of the post between people because they are passionate about the content of the post.

Before things like Instagram to comment on the news and politics people would have face-to-

face conversation on the subject or maybe write letters to express their opinions, but Instagram

comments provide the opportunity for millions of people around the world to participate in the

conversation and give their feedback on a person’s comment. The genre of writing on news and

political Instagram post comments has not really changed over time and people continue to voice

their opinions.

When Buzzfeed News posts on their account they will always follow the same format for

the caption. On every post the caption will always include information about the picture. The

caption is always a short summary of the larger article on the Buzzfeed News website. The

summary will have the key points of the article, but not enough information to give the full story.

The captains will usually provide a timeframe for the photo, so that the audience will know when

everything is taking place. The caption will sometimes have references to the past few months or

saying “last week” to give a timeframe.3 The writing for this genre is longer than most Instagram

captions, but are in the medium range of length for captions of the app because some account

post longer captions. On every one of the posts, the account ends the caption with where they got

the image they used and put it in parenthesis, always use the camera emoji. The Buzzfeed News

caption genre will always include a variation of “(📷: Emma Mcintyre / Getty Images),” but

3
BuzzFeed Inc. n.d. Instagram. Accessed December 5, 2019. https://www.instagram.com/buzzfeednews/.
 Maya
Olesen 6 Formatted: Tab stops: 3.25", Centered + 6.5", Right +
WP1 Paper Not at 5.85"
with where the image was found changed.4 The conventions of writing captions on the Buzzfeed

News Instagram page are different from other news pages on Instagram therefore making the

captions their own genre.

The reason behind why the captions are written like they are is because BuzzFeed knows

their audience and knows how to write to them. Since most of the audience for Buzzfeed News

on Instagram young millennials they know they need to keep the captions short and to the point.

Since Instagram is a platform where people want to get their information fast and efficient

Buzzfeed News knows that they need to put enough information to give people the news, but not

enough to give the full story, so that those more interested will go to the Buzzfeed website. Since

Buzzfeed writes so that its intended audience can read it, so the diction they use is more simple

than it is complex. The Buzzfeed News Instagram caption conventions are done so their intended

audience will be able to read the information and have an easy understanding.

The antecedent genre for Buzzfeed News captions could be a number of things. The

Buzzfeed News website could simply be the antecedent genre because before Instagram was

around Buzzfeed would post it news articles only on the website making this a prior genre to the

captions. Buzzfeed News may be an antecedent genre, but the two are slightly different because

posting articles on the website came directly before Instagram. On the website the posts are

about to be much longer and contain all of the information. The discover page of the Buzzfeed

News is closer to the Buzzfeed News Instagram caption because there is less information and the

audience needs to access the article to find the whole story.5 To stray away from antecedent

4
BuzzFeed Inc. . 2019. Instagram. November 20. Accessed December 8,
2019.https://www.instagram.com/p/B5GIJqeggNj/.
5
BuzzFeed Inc. . n.d. BuzzFeed News. Accessed December 7, 2019. https://www.buzzfeednews.com/.
 Maya
Olesen 7 Formatted: Tab stops: 3.25", Centered + 6.5", Right +
WP1 Paper Not at 5.85"
genres online, however, I would say that newspaper covers where there is only part of a story

would an antecedent genre. Similar to the Buzzfeed News captions these small boxes on

newspaper covers will have a small amount of information that give some of the story. The New

York Daily News is a good example of putting some information but leaving the rest in a

different place. The difference between these two is that the captions can have more information.

The antecedent genres are very similar to the Buzzfeed News Instagram captions, but do differ

slightly because the audience varies with each location. One thing they all share in common is

that they want the audience to have some information, but not the full story so that they need to

go into the newspaper or website further.

Buzzfeed is a very popular entertainment company and works through many forms of

social media platforms. Their news account on Instagram posts very frequently and their captions

always follow the same conventions of writing no matter the post. The account writes their

captions in the specific way because it works for the audience and makes it so the actual

Buzzfeed website will have more people look at it. Before Instagram there were antecedent

genres to the Buzzfeed News Instagram caption, which were Buzzfeed itself and the covers of

some newspapers most specifically The New York Daily News. The conventions of writing a

Buzzfeed News Instagram caption are important and make the caption stand out from other

captions on Instagram.
 Maya
Olesen 8 Formatted: Tab stops: 3.25", Centered + 6.5", Right +
WP1 Paper Not at 5.85"

Bibliography
BuzzFeed Inc. . n.d. BuzzFeed News. Accessed December 7, 2019.
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/.
—. 2019. Instagram. December 4. Accessed December 5, 2019.
https://www.instagram.com/p/B5rAivHnj1m/.
—. 2019. Instagram. November 20. Accessed December 8, 2019.
https://www.instagram.com/p/B5GIJqeggNj/.
BuzzFeed Inc. n.d. Instagram. Accessed December 5, 2019.
https://www.instagram.com/buzzfeednews/.
“Rhetoric.” The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition. 2003.
Houghton Mifflin Company, n.d. Web. 24 July 2009.