Navigating the Digital Wild West

Introduction: Why Social Media is the Lifeline of Modern Media

I’ve been brought on board as a social media consultant to examine ABC News, a major news organization that traces its roots to the American Broadcasting Company (ABC), which was spun off from NBC in 1943 and later acquired by The Walt Disney Company in 1996. ABC News specializes in producing national and international news broadcasts, investigative journalism, and documentary programming across television and digital platforms.

In the current media landscape, success is no longer defined merely by journalistic quality but by distribution power. We have shifted from a world where media organizations were gatekeepers to one where platform companies control access to audiences [1, 2]. This means ABC News must constantly adapt to digital media and build a profession and a business model that is fit for the future [3].

For ABC News, social media is critical. In this highly competitive environment, news media must compete for attention with everyone from ordinary users to celebrity “influencers” [4]. This competition is particularly acute among younger audiences: about one-in-five U.S. adults (21%) say they regularly get news from influencers on social media, a share that rises to 37% among those ages 18 to 29 [5, 6]. This requires ABC News to effectively use social media to reach the public with accurate, accessible, diverse, relevant, and timely independently produced information about public affairs [7].

Body: Summary of Social Media Use: Platforms, Metrics, and Engagement

Platform Strategy and Operational Effectiveness

ABC News currently maintains active accounts on several major social media sites, including X (formerly Twitter), Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, and Facebook. As of October 2025, the organization’s platform presence breaks down as follows:

• YouTube (@ABC News): 19.1-19.2 million subscribers, making it their largest social platform by follower count. However, analytics reports from October 2025 suggest the channel’s engagement rate and subscriber growth rate could be “improved,” indicating potential underperformance relative to industry benchmarks.
• TikTok (@abcnews): 4.7 million followers, positioning ABC News within the short-form video ecosystem that dominates younger demographics.
• Instagram (@abcnews): 4.5 million followers as of August 2024, providing a visual-first platform for news clips and stories.
• X (Twitter) & Facebook: While specific recent follower counts are unavailable, ABC News maintains active presences on both platforms for real-time news distribution.

Platform Metrics & Content: Given that 85% of news influencers have a presence on X [8], ABC News’s Twitter/X account remains strategically important for breaking news and real-time engagement. 50% of news influencers having an account on Instagram [8] reinforces the importance of ABC News’s visual content strategy. The company’s content across these platforms ranges from breaking news updates to short-form video clips, investigative report teasers, and full broadcast episodes (particularly on YouTube), adapting to the format requirements of each platform.

Posting Frequency: Industry standards for 2025 suggest high-volume posting: TikTok (1-4 times daily), Instagram (1-2 posts daily), X/Twitter (2+ tweets daily for active news brands), and Facebook (approximately 5 posts daily). ABC News appears to follow aggressive posting schedules across platforms to maintain visibility.

Effectiveness and Maintenance: The rise of digital media has led to a significant decline in news outlets’ direct access to audiences, reinforcing the importance of platform visibility [9]. ABC News must be effective at managing its accounts (regular updates, quick response times) because in the ever-more intense competition for attention, journalism is often at risk of losing out [10, 11]. The social media manager’s role here is crucial, as they must act much like a product manager, coordinating efforts across departments and utilizing data-based decision-making to grow the online audience [12].

Figure 1: ABC News follower distribution across major social media platforms as of October 2025. YouTube dominates with 67.6% of total followers, followed by TikTok (16.5%) and Instagram (15.8%).

The Five C’s: Analyzing Social Media Uniqueness

We must evaluate how ABC News addresses the components that make social media unique: choice, conversation, curation, creation, and collaboration.

Choice & Curation: Digital media drive people to more and more diverse sources through distributed discovery [10, 13]. ABC News provides choice by maintaining a multi-platform presence from the professional, broadcast-quality content on YouTube to the quick, personality-driven clips on TikTok. However, effective curation means ensuring that the vast amount of information available is properly synthesized for the public. With industry trends pushing toward short-form video and AI-driven personalization, ABC News must curate strategically to cut through the noise without sacrificing depth.

Creation & Conversation: When it comes to creation, ABC News must avoid the temptation to produce superficial journalism. There is a risk of reporters being left “churning out clickbait from press releases and the like” [14]. This type of superficial content, sometimes referred to as “stunt journalism”, involves the writer becoming a guinea pig, attempting some masochistic or outrageous challenge [15]. These pieces often feature first-person, declarative headlines like “I Ate Nothing But Burritos for a Week” [16, 17]. While popular, journalism professor Duy Linh Tu argues that pulling these stunts, which he calls “content” rather than journalism, cannot “build a long-term journalistic organization” [18].

ABC News’s focus on breaking news, investigative reports, and broadcast-quality video suggests a commitment to substantive journalism. However, the organization’s YouTube engagement issues may indicate that the platform’s content strategy, potentially over-reliant on full broadcast uploads, is not optimized for the algorithmic, short-attention-span environment of 2025.

ABC News’s conversation must be assessed: Is it a true forum for exchange of comment and criticism where the names and characters of participants are not hidden from view [19]? The organization’s comment sections and social engagement practices will determine whether it fosters genuine dialogue or simply broadcasts one-way messages.

Collaboration: While some organizations pool resources or share work, the best journalism today is better than ever and involves innovative formats like deep engagement with readers or cross-national collaborative investigative reporting [20]. ABC News needs to demonstrate collaboration with its audience, viewing them as valuable “produsers” [21]. Given the rise of personality-led news and influencer competition, ABC News should consider empowering individual correspondents and anchors (such as David Muir, whose broadcasts are prominently featured on YouTube) to develop their own authentic voices and relationships with digital audiences.

Conclusion: Assessment and Recommendations (Critique & SWOT Analysis)

My personal critique is that while ABC News has adapted to the technical necessities of the digital age, maintaining robust presences across major platforms. Its strategy appears to struggle with platform-native optimization. The organization’s strong subscriber base (particularly YouTube’s 19+ million) is not translating into proportional engagement, suggesting that ABC News may be treating social media as a broadcast distribution channel rather than embracing the interactive, algorithm-driven nature of modern platforms. This risks leading to news avoidance because people feel the news is irrelevant and depressing [23]. Furthermore, the complexity of AI increases platform companies’ control [24], creating dependencies that threaten journalistic autonomy.

SWOT Analysis

Recommendations

1. Optimize for Platform-Native Engagement, Not Just Distribution

ABC News must move beyond treating social media as a broadcast channel. The organization’s YouTube engagement issues suggest that simply uploading full broadcasts is insufficient. Instead, ABC News should:

• Prioritize short-form video: Invest heavily in YouTube Shorts, TikTok, and Instagram Reels optimized for each platform’s algorithm. Break down investigative pieces and breaking news into digestible, compelling clips with strong hooks in the first 3 seconds.
• Test and iterate rapidly: Adopt a product thinking approach [27, 28] where social media teams use A/B testing and data analytics to understand what content formats drive engagement, not just views.
• Leverage personality-driven content: Empower correspondents like David Muir and field reporters to develop authentic, individual voices on social media. Given that 21% of adults (37% of 18-29-year-olds) get news from influencers [5, 6], ABC News must compete by humanizing its journalism.

2. Mandate Entrepreneurial, Strategy-Focused Leadership

ABC News must promote leaders who are excited about being entrepreneurs and can strategize [36, 37]. Leaders should think like product managers, uniting the newsroom and business goals to prioritize the community’s needs [27, 28]. Instead of using AI to churn out more content in a journalistic version of the Jevons Paradox [38], the organization must ensure time savings are dedicated to deep, high-quality public service reporting that AI cannot replace [39, 40].

Specifically:

• Social media managers should act as cross-functional coordinators [12], bridging newsroom, tech, and business teams.
• Leadership must resist the temptation toward “stunt journalism” [15, 18] or superficial viral content that sacrifices long-term credibility for short-term engagement.

3. Establish Hybrid AI Protocols to Maintain Autonomy

The company must address the risks posed by reliance on AI infrastructure from platform companies (Google, Amazon, Microsoft), which are central players in AI development [24, 41]. Since the majority of publishers rely on third-party solutions due to the high costs of custom AI [42], ABC News must implement a hybrid system where the machine makes a recommendation, but a human is deciding, thereby making AI tools more effective and addressing ethical concerns [43].

Specifically:

• Use AI for efficiency gains (e.g., 93.75% time savings on transcription [30]) but redirect those savings toward investigative work that requires human judgment.
• Avoid inadvertently improving platform AI systems using ABC News’s own content, which furthers the platforms’ control over information [44, 45].
• Implement transparent AI policies to maintain audience trust and editorial integrity.

4. Foster True Conversation and Collaboration

ABC News must transform its social media presence from broadcast to dialogue. This means:

• Creating spaces for genuine exchange of comment and criticism [19] where audiences feel heard.
• Viewing audiences as “produsers” [21] who co-create value through their engagement, commentary, and content sharing.
• Collaborating with other news organizations on major investigations [20], demonstrating journalism’s collective power.

Citations and References

[5, 6] One-in-five U.S. adults (21%) say they regularly get news from news influencers… 37% among those ages 18 to 29: Influencers Who Often Post About News, and Who Sees Their Content | Pew Research Center

[8] 85% of news influencers have a presence on X; 50% of news influencers having an account on Instagram: Influencers Who Often Post About News, and Who Sees Their Content | Pew Research Center

[1, 2] Media organizations moved from gatekeepers to platform control: More Important, But Less Robust? Five Things Everybody Needs to Know about the Future of Journalism

[3] Building a profession and a business fit for the future: More Important, But Less Robust? Five Things Everybody Needs to Know about the Future of Journalism

[4] News media compete for attention: More Important, But Less Robust? Five Things Everybody Needs to Know about the Future of Journalism

[7] Provide accurate, accessible, diverse, relevant, and timely independently produced information: Artificial Intelligence in the News: How AI Retools, Rationalizes, and Reshapes Journalism and the Public Arena

[9] Significant decline in news outlets’ direct access to audiences: More Important, But Less Robust? Five Things Everybody Needs to Know about the Future of Journalism

[10, 11] Journalism losing the battle for people’s attention: More Important, But Less Robust? Five Things Everybody Needs to Know about the Future of Journalism

[12] Social media manager acts like a product manager, using data-based decision-making: Journalism Needs Leaders Who Know How to Run a Business

[27, 28] Product thinking prioritizes the needs of the user/customer: Journalism Needs Leaders Who Know How to Run a Business

[10, 13] Digital media drive people to more diverse sources: More Important, But Less Robust? Five Things Everybody Needs to Know about the Future of Journalism

[15] Stunt journalism defined as writer becoming a guinea pig: Are We Living in a Golden Age of Stunt Journalism? - Newsweek

[16, 17] Headline structure of stunt pieces (“I Ate Nothing But Burritos for a Week”): Are We Living in a Golden Age of Stunt Journalism? - Newsweek

[18] Stunt journalism cannot build a long-term journalistic organization: Are We Living in a Golden Age of Stunt Journalism? - Newsweek

[14] Journalists churning out clickbait: More Important, But Less Robust? Five Things Everybody Needs to Know about the Future of Journalism

[19] A forum for the exchange of comment and criticism: The freedoms and responsibilities of all public writers

[20] Best journalism today involves collaborative investigative reporting: More Important, But Less Robust? Five Things Everybody Needs to Know about the Future of Journalism

[21] Audiences as “produsers”: Referenced from academic discussions of user-generated content and participatory media.

[23] News avoidance because news feels irrelevant/depressing: [More Important, But Less Robust? Five Things Everybody Needs to Know about the Future of Journalism](https://risj.org/publications/more-important-less-robust-five-things