Snap Society 2020 - A Recap

More than 150 university students and media professionals attended the conference Snap Society on Jan. 30. The conference was held in Atriet, Media City Bergen, and focused on the uses of Snapchat injournalism, health communication and education respectively. At the conference, Snapchat experts from many fields discussed how the app is rapidly changing our social interactions.

Snap development in journalism

The first topic highlighted at the conference was Snapchat and journalism.

During the last three years, Norway ́s largest news site VG has experimented extensively with Snapchat as a new form of storytelling. VG Snapchat ́s project manager, Randi Elise Midtskog, gave a talk on VG ́s success on Snapchat, andhow they manage to reach more than 500.000 young readers on a daily basis. She shared the Snap reporters ́ experiences with the new journalism format, what challenges they face and accomplishments on the way.Maja Vedå from ViSmedia presented some of the main findings in her master ́s thesis “Snapchat Journalism. A study of VG ́s Investment in Snapchat. Focusing on how the news is presented on the platform, she explained how VG ́s experiments with visual news in a short format differ from what we normally see in edited online news. After the two short presentations, Hilde Sandvik, moderated a panel debate that included the two speakers and three young adults. Here they discussed what kind of journalism we witness on VG ́s Snapchat channel, and whether Snapchat is a good place to disseminate news to young audiences. What is news on Snapchat and how does this new journalism format work? Watch the whole session here

Healthy snapping

Most of the 2,5 Norwegian Snapchat users are young people under 25. But how can sensitive issues on mental health issues best be shared on the platform? And how can social media improve the communication between young people and the Police? The second session on healthy snapping attracted particularly much interest among the student attendees. Psyktærlig is a Norwegian Snapchat channel operated by eight young women with a background fromthe psychiatry. Marta Engevik Fjæreide is one of them. On the channel she talks and shares personal experiences, advice and facts with her followers. In her presentation she discussed positive and negative aspects of increased openness on mental health in social media. Psyktærlig is not the only group who reaches out to young people through Snapchat and social media. Politiet Vest, a Police division located in Western Norway, started the project Nettpatruljen in the fall 2019. Superintendent Rune Fimreite explained how the Police work online and how their communication with young people has evolved thanks to social media.How to best communicate health and policing on a platform like Snapchat? Watch the whole session here:

Snapchat - the new teacher?

How can Snapchat best be utilized in teaching? What considerations needs to be done when teaching social media ethics on mobile phones? And what is up with surveillance and Snap Map? These were issues that were discussed in the third session of the Snap Society conference at Media City Bergen. Terje Pedersen is a teacher at Rothaugen school in Bergen. He was invited to talk about a pilot project run in collaboration with ViSmedia, in which 12 teachers and 180 teenage students at the Rothaugen school were involved. As an educator passionate about learning through new technologies, Pedersen initiated a pilot project where the teachers explored Snapchat in the classroom. One of the assistants who worked extensively with Pedersen ́s students on the project was Maren Myrseth from ViSmedia. At the conference she also presented her insights in problematic aspects of Snapchat use, such as illegal image sharing and surveillance on Snap Map. But how do we know what choices to make in the day-to-day digital landscape? Ragnhild Daae Bekkevold from the Norwegian Directorate for Education and Training emphasized the importance of teaching students sound judgement skills when it comes to social media.At the end of the third session, the presenters along with three young students from Pedersen ́s class engaged in a panel discussion moderated by Hilde Sandvik. During al the panel sessions, the app Slido was successfully used to interact closely with the audience.

Watch the whole session here:

All Photos by Hedvig Idås