News Content on Instagram: The Diffusion of Short-form Vertical Audiovisual Formats in the Field of Television Journalism in Bosnia and Herzegovina

Abstract

Access to news increasingly takes place via digital platforms, with social networks for sharing short-form video content, such as Instagram Reels, becoming ever more significant for news consumption and presentation, particularly among younger audiences. In the literature on the platformization of news, these technologies are understood not only as channels of news distribution but also as socio-technical environments that condition the ways in which journalistic content is presented. A central question in these debates concerns how journalistic content adapts to platform requirements while preserving professional norms. Previous research has predominantly focused on other platforms, while far less is known about how these practices unfold in the case of Instagram, especially within the context of television journalism in post-socialist countries. With the aim of gaining preliminary insights, this article examines the extent to which and the ways in which television newsrooms in Bosnia and Herzegovina adopt short-form vertical video formats designed for sharing on Instagram and for consumption via smartphones, for the purposes of presenting and distributing journalistic content. Drawing on the conceptual frameworks of diffusion of innovations and the platformization of news, the study analyzes Instagram Reels published on the official Instagram accounts of eight television stations with news departments, using content analysis as the research method. The findings provide insights into the rate of adoption of these formats, content production strategies, positioning in relation to platform affordances, and the implications for topic and source selection in journalistic content. The article contributes to an understanding of the transformation of television journalism in the digital age, particularly the diffusion of innovations in the production and distribution of news content as part of broader processes of the institutional adaptation of television within the digital platform ecosystem.