Bringing News in Chinese to the Instagram Generation
Almost founder Kassy Cho on how the Taiwan-based startup is delivering the news to young people where they are — in formats that make sense to them.
Kassy Cho is the founder and editor-in-chief for Taiwan-based Almost, the first media outlet on Instagram to cover world news stories for young people. She previously was an audience development editor at Bloomberg and BuzzFeed News, and she has helped Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, WaterAid, and other advocacy groups grow their digital audiences.
Lingua Sinica spoke with Kassy about how she and her team are tailoring news content for younger consumers, as audiences' attention spans shorten but their curiosity about the world and their desire to do good are undiminished. As they rapidly grow an audience in their home region, we were also keen to learn about how Almost translated their global success for Chinese-language audiences.
Lingua Sinica: What inspired you to launch an outlet leveraging Instagram for news? What are some unique advantages Instagram has over Twitter and other platforms — for example, in terms of the audiences you can reach and the kinds of stories you can tell?
Kassy Cho: I founded Almost because I was unsatisfied with the media landscape, one that lacked not only a global representation of voices and stories but also dedicated to delivering the news to young people where they are, in formats that make sense to them.
Habits are changing. Young people are no longer getting their news from traditional sources such as newspapers and TV. They’re turning to social media platforms like Instagram and TikTok, and for good reason. Stories told on these platforms focused on video are more visually appealing, personal, and engaging than traditional formats.
With Instagram, you can not only reach a new, younger, and more diverse audience who do not exist on traditional platforms but also tell stories in diverse and innovative formats. From short-form videos to infographics, Instagram allows us to bring stories to life in a more visual, accessible, and personal way, which is crucial in growing an audience as attention spans get shorter.
But most importantly, platforms such as Instagram and TikTok allow us to foster a loyal community through interactive features such as Q&A stickers and broadcast channels, which brings us closer to our audience, rather than as a faceless media outlet pushing out articles dictating what people should care about. Instagram allows us to reach our audience on a more personal level; a hosted Reel or TikTok is like a friend FaceTiming you to tell you a cool story they learned, while an Instagram broadcast channel message is like a DM. It also allows us to hear directly from our audience – through comments, DMs, polls, and reactions – in terms of topics they care about and want us to cover.
Very vitally, these features allow us to build a more loyal and engaged audience that can help serve long-term goals. Whether that is driving website traffic or newsletter sign-ups, as the data tells us, an engaged audience that trusts and loves what you do will follow you everywhere.
LS: Earlier this year you launched Almost in Chinese and it seems to have been growing quite rapidly — did this success surprise you and how do you account for it?
KC: I actually launched the Almost Chinese account at the same time as the English account in November 2020, but the Chinese account only started growing rapidly this year. It’s something that my team and I have put a lot of time and effort into over the past three years, and I’m so glad that it’s finally gaining traction. Growth on social media tends to be exponential, and I feel like we are finally hitting our stride.
I do think that it reflects the new trend in Taiwan – that young audiences are increasingly turning to social media for news and information about the world. It’s something we already witnessed in the West a few years ago, when the BuzzFeed @world Instagram I was running at the time grew from 50,000 followers to nearly 800,000 followers in just over a year, making it the fastest-growing news account on the platform in 2018. The media landscape in Taiwan has remained relatively stagnant and is not something people feel positively about. It’s only natural that young people are accessing information on social media, as their distrust of traditional media grows.
LS: What can you tell us about the demographics of your audience? Do they skew younger and are they mostly based in Taiwan/HK/diasporic communities or all of the above?
KC: More than 80% of the audience on the Almost Chinese account is young people under the age of 34, with a pretty even split between men and women. The majority of the audience (about 80%) are based in Taiwan. However, we also have followers from Hong Kong, Malaysia, China, and diasporic communities all around the world.
LS: In terms of your Chinese-language content, has it been a straight translation job or have you had to tailor your style and content to Chinese-language audiences? If so, how?
KC: Although the majority of the content we share on Almost starts in English, it’s never as simple as a straight translation job. We always put our audience first, and the reality is that our audiences are very different on the English and Chinese accounts.
As such, we put a lot of thought into how we can best localize and adapt every single post for the Chinese account. We spend time workshopping headlines, scripts, and captions to ensure that we factor in the level of understanding and knowledge the Chinese audience has about a certain topic or issue. This might mean cutting out information that the Chinese audience already knows such as the details of the Tiananmen Square Massacre or explaining things that they might not be as familiar with such as the history of Israel’s occupation of Palestine.
Not only that, we also dedicate the same level of effort to the visuals, from the design of our graphics, to the delivery of our hosted videos, and the choice of photos. As you will see, the look of our Chinese account is slightly different from that of the English account. That’s because we spend time studying Chinese-speaking audiences’ habits on Instagram and the types of content they share and consume. Then, we optimize our own formats to ensure that our content feels natural to Chinese-speaking audiences when they are scrolling on their phones
LS: We’re also curious about the "actionability" of what you cover, and how you try to drive people to affect the news you cover — is this something novel to the space?
KC: From the outset, I’ve been clear that Almost’s mission is to equip young people with the knowledge they require to bring about positive change.
This is something that the world has been moving towards, as we saw when Greta Thunberg first started striking outside the Swedish parliament in 2018 to the explosion in social justice content and resources on Instagram after the killing of George Floyd in 2020. Instagram, once a place to share curated photos of one’s beautiful lifestyle, has morphed into what Axios calls “an informational powerhouse”. And it reflects more young people’s attitudes about the world.
So with all that being said, it’s not something novel for young people to be doing on Instagram but definitely a new space for media outlets. However, we have never shied away from covering these kinds of topics – politics, social justice, and activism. These are the topics that young people have told us again and again, through the data, comments, and DMs – the topics they care about and often proven to be the most rewarding for us.
We always want to ensure we are meeting our audience's needs, and increasingly – in particular since the war in Gaza – they are telling us they would like to know how to help. So it only makes sense that we provide this information for them. At the same time, taking action can be something as small as sharing a post with others or choosing to follow an account for more information, and that’s something we actively encourage with our content.
LS: Finally, what are your and Almost's plans for the future?
KC: I hope that we can continue to build up Almost’s audience so that we can become the go-to news outlet for young people on Instagram and TikTok in Taiwan (and globally for the English account). As part of that, we will continue to experiment with new formats and different ways of telling stories, as well as start collaborating with more and more purpose-driven individuals and organizations to create content that will help us reach a wider audience in Taiwan.
Beyond that, in line with our mission, we are looking to collaborate with more schools and educational organizations on workshops, talks, and events so that we can help develop young people in Taiwan’s media literacy and understanding and knowledge of current affairs.