A&E: Infographics on Instagram can spread awareness and educate users about important issues

Franchesca Casis|November 2, 2020

Many SCHS students repost or make infographics to help spread important resources and awareness.

On any given day a barrage of infographics might dominate one’s Instagram feed, providing bite-sized info-dumps on topics ranging from Black Lives Matter to Feminism.

As the BLM movement gained prominence once again following the deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and others, Instagram users began creating and sharing infographics to educate people. In lieu of posting links to lengthy news articles, some accounts choose to share information through infographics. Some feel the eye-catching bullet-point summaries help educate Instagram users on a wide variety of subjects. There are infographics covering topics including racism, gender equality, mental health and world news.

Some SCHS students have been reposting educational infographics in hopes of spreading awareness to their peers. Sophomore Amelia Seifert reposts them to inform more people about topics and issues she believes are important and spread ways to help.

“If you share an infographic they’ll (your followers) be more educated, and they can see the resources and petitions to sign and just ways to help if they didn’t know about the issue,” Seifert said.

Freshman Nadine Ngo noticed that she has become more educated and aware due to infographics on social media.

“I definitely learned more about politics and the outside world. When I was younger, I was never into news and politics and all that kind of stuff, but now that I have been exposed more to social media, I feel like I now learn more,” Ngo said. “I think that helps me see the bigger picture of what’s really going on.”

According to Seifert, infographics have been gaining popularity due to their easy-to-read format and concise information.

“A lot of times news articles – the way they’re written – people may not understand the information, but in infographics, there’s usually diagrams and graphs and it’s in bullet points so the information is very to-the-point,” Seifert said.

Some students find that infographics also go more in depth about certain topics compared to mainstream news. According to senior Isabella Pacho, unlike the news, infographics are not as censored about certain topics and provide people a lot of information.

“The news doesn’t cover everything. It’s more watered down,” Pacho said. “With infographics, they just get straight to the point and give all this information, and it’s not censored or anything so you get all the information right to you.”

Infographics, however, are not guaranteed to have accurate information. Freshman Asher Dubin thinks that since anyone can make an infographic, there are infographics with false information.

“Certain accounts avoid bias, but others don’t if they’re trying to convince someone something they agree with,” Dubin said. “To avoid seeing false information all together, looking up respected and trusted Instagram pages or websites would be good.”

Since infographics are often reposted within the same social media circle, students are likely to see the same one multiple times. Pacho said she feels that because many people are staying home during the pandemic, they have had more time to get in touch with the news.

“Just click a single tap you can go through your story and swipe through different posts, and all the information is right in front of you so you don’t have to go to different websites,” Pacho said.

As users repost many infographics on their Instagram stories, their followers can repost that same one causing a chain reaction of people reposting them, which can encourage more people to spread awareness.

“Even if you have 10 or 1,000 followers, it doesn’t really matter as long as you get that information and post it where it’s available for everyone to see,” Ngo said.