SNARF: Killing social media? News organizations must decide if and how to use social media in their pursuit of audience

I think the best way to look at social media in 2025 is as a tool to create and maintain a connection to your audience. Reach out to them for advice. Speak to them like human beings. Let them know you’re in their community and want to make a difference. Just as comment sections aren’t a community, one-way chatter on social media isn’t a conversation.”

Rob Tornoe, digital editor and writer, The Philadelphia Inquirer

There’s no point beating around the bush — social media is terrible. 

Not too long ago, news organizations viewed Facebook, Twitter and other platforms as a digital bridge to the future, a way to transform their 20th-century business model of printing information on paper into a 21st-century business operation. 

How times have changed … 

Driven by their own needs to be profitable, platforms like Facebook and X now focus on keeping users engaged on their websites as long as possible. This obviously limits their utility to news organizations, who need readers to visit their pages to make money and stay in business. 

This dynamic isn’t new — the decline of social media as a powerful audience tool began at Facebook in 2018 and grew with Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter in 2022, transforming it into a right-wing echo chamber unfriendly to major news organizations. TikTok contributed to the mess by introducing powerful algorithms powered by artificial intelligence that force users to cater their content to what’s popular or not seen by most users, behavior that Facebook and X have worked hard to mimic. 

None of this is new, of course. Talk to any journalist, and you’ll likely have to pry them away from some type of newsfeed on their phone. Most news organizations have moved on, shifting their efforts away from social media to more worthwhile endeavors, such as newsletters or optimizing content for search.

Jordan Peretti thinks it might not be time to give up entirely. 

Peretti, the founder of Buzzfeed, has been around long enough to both benefit from the digital media boom powered by social media platforms and suffer their wrath when the spigots are turned off.

The highs were high. Arguably more famous than their quizzes was a stunt Buzzfeed pulled in 2016 when two staffers drew over 800,000 concurrent viewers on a live stream where they attempted to see how many rubber bands it would take to burst a watermelon. (690, if you were wondering). However, changes in how social media platforms delivered content forced Buzzfeed to go through numerous rounds of layoffs, bringing it in line with the legacy news organizations it had hoped to supplant. 

Peretti thinks social media sites are unhealthy and making users miserable, all because of the rise of SNARF, an acronym for stakes, novelty, anger, retention and fear. Essentially, to have your content get noticed on social media, you either must exaggerate the stakes, manufacture novelty, or make people angry or afraid. 

“Content creators exaggerate stakes to make their content urgent and existential. They manufacture novelty and spin their content as unprecedented and unique. They manipulate anger to drive engagement via outrage. They hack retention by withholding information and promising a payoff at the end of a video. And they provoke fear to make people focus with urgency on their content,” Peretti wrote last month in what he described as a “manifesto” of the future of the internet. “Every piece of content faces ruthless Darwinian competition, so only SNARF can be successful, even if it is inaccurate, hateful, fake, ethically dubious and intellectually suspect.”

A recent National Bureau of Economic Research study appears to support the idea social media is making us miserable. Most respondents said the world would be a better place if TikTok and Instagram didn’t exist, and they only stick around because they’re either addicted to the content or have an unhealthy fear of missing out or feeling out of the loop. 

“I use TikTok as a habit. I hate TikTok and know I have other things I need to do, but I subconsciously click on it, then scroll for hours,” one respondent said. “It’s very hard to control it.”

So, what does this have to do with newsrooms? If Peretti is correct, there are limited lanes within which legitimate news organizations can operate to find success on most legacy social media platforms. 

One strategy would be to focus your social media efforts on content and topics where the stakes are justifiably high or novelty is real. I’m sure you’ve seen plenty of headlines in recent weeks about the unprecedented nature of various actions of the Trump administration. These are real, and localizing the impacts on people within your community can garner a larger audience engaged in what’s going on in Washington, D.C. 

Judd Legum, the creator of the Popular Information newsletter, reported one of Trump’s executive orders froze a grant that goes to low-income residents aimed at helping them afford their energy bills. Instead, residents in Alabama were hit with a $100 surcharge on their bills, a story that hits several letters in the SNARF acronym, but in a positive way based on factual journalism. Or, as Peretti called it, “SNARF for good.” 

Another strategy would be to counter-program against anger caused by a major breaking news story. The Philadelphia Inquirer (where I work) did this brilliantly during the election, publishing an editorial endorsing Kamala Harris shortly after both The Washington Post and Los Angeles Times were forced to pull similar endorsements. Both newspapers lost thousands of subscribers, while the Inquirer gained thousands, fueled by the same social media algorithms that put endorsement content in front of millions. 

You can also choose not to play the SNARF game at all. Remember, the days of high-margin returns on social media are long gone. You’re lucky if your newsroom can pull more than 10% of its traffic from social media, with the bulk likely coming from Facebook. 

One advantage Facebook offers is the ability to find groups of local readers in your community who are likely to find local content that is way more relevant and engaging than the average social media user. But finding success means playing the long game and connecting with admins and users directly — simply posting content in a community group is not the way to endear yourself to new readers. 

At the News Journal, a Gannett newspaper where I live in northern Delaware, they’ve seen success running a Facebook page called “What’s Going There in Delaware.” Boasting over 80,000 members (not bad for a state with a total population of just about a million people), the group is hyper-focused on new businesses opening in shopping centers and other locations across the state. The thriving community then drives traffic back to the News Journal’s website when they publish stories relevant to the group. 

I think the best way to look at social media in 2025 is as a tool to create and maintain a connection to your audience. Reach out to them for advice. Speak to them like human beings. Let them know you’re in their community and want to make a difference. Just as comment sections aren’t a community, one-way chatter on social media isn’t a conversation. 

The good news is the tide is beginning to shift as users become increasingly dissatisfied with legacy platforms. Showing readers we care is how we separate ourselves from the AI-powered machines making them miserable. Newsrooms still have too many walls erected between reporters and the communities they cover, and social media can act as a tunnel through them. 

Rob Tornoe is a cartoonist and columnist for Editor and Publisher, where he writes about trends in digital media. He is also a digital editor and writer for The Philadelphia Inquirer. Reach him at robtornoe@gmail.com.