More Americans are wearing symbols about current events than I can remember in my three-decade long life, and the contentious nature of the presidential race exemplifies how fashion will be a key part how people interact with news and express their interests as consumers in the coming year.
Consider the following few examples which tell us how Americans wore the news in 2016. There are “Make America Great Again” hats (and now ornaments, in case you needed to discuss politics during the holidays), Black Lives Matter shirts, Brexit’s safety pins, “Nasty Woman” regalia, the unfortunately newsy name of Melania Trump’s “pussy bow” blouse…or consider the homage to Black Panthers during Beyoncé’s Super Bowl performance or the return of custom pins like this “Dump Trump” one into influencer feeds and viral videos. My favorite example of mood-ring-politics memes is a photo of Hillary Clinton’s technicolor dreamcoat moment which popped up shortly before Election Day.
None of these instances are groundbreaking, but they tell us that people continue to find value in the act of interpreting current events using buying power. Perhaps the best example comes from Ivanka Trump, whose bangle-selling interviews bring new meaning to the phrase “statement piece.” Few consumers could buy a Trump-branded item today and not be reminded of whatever it is they think of the president-elect. In this sense, Donald Trump is perhaps America’s first brand president, which comes with all sorts of conflicts and controversies we should be prepared to address. As Teen Vogue’s recent advocacy-driven coverage has proven, media companies which traditionally gear toward studying consumer trends are being openly criticized for covering consumerism’s influence on identity politics during an election year. As if that’s not an important or valuable service, especially as our incoming president is himself a brand. Teen Vogue is on to something: Consumers deserve to understand the connection between news and the economy.
If it is a journalist’s job to report and analyze current events, we cannot do so while blind to the fact that people interact most directly with the news as consumers. Our audiences are increasingly wearing tweets as much as reading them. That simultaneously undermines the value of a tweeted headline and gives it a new, wearable life.
To wear one’s politics is a risk many Americans cannot afford to take, but there’s a final point beyond activism and class signaling that I sense here, and it has to to with the state of discourse on the open web. As more news readers (and watchers) come in contact with online harassment and fake news, there is a reassuring aspect to the permanence of the physical. A shirt can declare a statement that friends may never read on an algorithm-led Facebook feed. You cannot argue with a shirt. As journalists spend less time speaking to sources in person, we can observe how people communicate through consumerism to reach the full capacity of what modern journalism can provide.
If our audiences communicate with items, so can we. Did you know that fashion can raise money for journalism (are you listening, newsrooms)? The managing editor of Alabama’s Anniston Star made a t-shirt to raise funds for the Committee to Protect Journalists. If that doesn’t scream “future revenue streams,” I don’t know what does.
Margarita Noriega is executive editor of digital at Newsweek and founder of the Internet Review.
Matt Waite The people running the media are the problem
Caitlin Thompson High touch, high value
Michael Kuntz Trust is the new click
Gabriel Snyder The aberration of 20th-century journalism
Rachel Sklar Women are going to get loud
Julia Beizer Building a coherent core identity
Nicholas Quah Podcasting’s coming class war
Mandy Velez The audience is the source and the story
Jonathan Hunt Measurement companies get with the times
Amie Ferris-Rotman Вслед за Россией
Margarita Noriega From pinning tweets to tweeting pins
Tanya Cordrey The resurgence of reach
Rubina Madan Fillion Snapchat grows up
Robert Hernandez History will exclude you, again
Eric Nuzum Podcasting stratifies into hard layers
Peter Sterne A dangerous anti-press mix
Anita Zielina The sales funnel reaches (and changes) the newsroom
Tim Herrera The safe space of service journalism
Erin Millar The bottom falls out of Canadian media
Valérie Bélair-Gagnon Truthiness in private spaces
Errin Haines Chaos or community?
Andrew Haeg The year of listening
Helen Havlak Chasing mobile search results
Carla Zanoni Prioritizing emotional health
Laura Walker Authentic voices, not fake news
Matt Karolian AI improves publishing
Lam Thuy Vo The primary source in the age of mechanical multiplication
Ståle Grut The battle for high-quality VR
Mary Walter-Brown Getting comfortable asking for money
Kawandeep Virdee Moving deeper than the machine of clicks
Alberto Cairo Communicating uncertainty to our readers
Jonathan Stray A boom in responsible conservative media
Michael Oreskes Reversing the erosion of democracy
Maria Bustillos “It’s true — I saw it on Facebook”
Keren Goldshlager Defining a focus, and then saying no
Emily Goligoski Incorporating audience feedback at scale
Annemarie Dooling UGC as a path out of the bubble
Kathleen Kingsbury Print as a premium offering
Burt Herman Local news gets interesting
Alexis Lloyd Public trust for private realities
Asma Khalid The year of the newsy podcast
Sue Schardt Objectivity, fairness, balance, and love
Tracie Powell Building reader relationships
Melody Kramer Radically rethinking design
Rebekah Monson Journalism is community-as-a-service
Sara M. Watson There is no neutral interface
Katie Zhu The year of minority media
Mary Meehan Feeling blue in a red state
Millie Tran International expansion without colonial overtones
Swati Sharma Failing diversity is failing journalism
Reyhan Harmanci Bear witness — but then what?
Elizabeth Jensen Trust depends on the details
Umbreen Bhatti A sense of journalists’ humanity
Zizi Papacharissi Distracted journalism looks in the mirror
Amy O'Leary Not just covering communities, reaching them
Nathalie Malinarich Making it easy
Megan H. Chan Cultural reporting goes mainstream
Libby Bawcombe Kids board the podcast train
Andrew Losowsky Building our own communities
Sydette Harry Facing journalism’s history
Mira Lowe News literacy, bias, and “Hamilton”
Sam Ford The year we talk about our awful metrics
Bill Keller A healthy skepticism about data
Emi Kolawole From empathy to community
Scott Dodd Nonprofits team up for impact
Nushin Rashidian A rise in high-price, high-value subscriptions
Taylor Lorenz “Selfie journalism” becomes a thing
Renée Kaplan Pure reach has reached its limit
Vivian Schiller Tested like never before
M. Scott Havens Quality advertising to pair with quality content
Amy Webb Journalism as a service
Sarah Wolozin Virtual reality on the open web
Bill Adair The year of the fact-checking bot
Tressie McMillan Cottom A path through the media’s coming legitimacy crisis
AX Mina 2017 is for the attention innovators
Jon Slade Trusted news, at a premium
Richard Tofel The country doesn’t trust us — but they do believe us
Doris Truong Connecting with diverse perspectives
David Chavern Fake news gets solved
Guy Raz Inspiration and hope will matter more than ever
Priya Ganapati Mobile websites are ready for reinvention
Ryan McCarthy Platforms grow up or grow more toxic
Steve Henn The next revolution is voice
Joanne Lipman The year of the drone, really
Aja Bogdanoff Comments start pulling their weight
Jeremy Barr A terrible year for Tiers B through D
Dan Colarusso Let’s make live video we can love
Ken Schwencke Disaggregation and collection
Pablo Boczkowski Fake news and the future of journalism
Andrew Ramsammy Rise of the rebel journalist
P. Kim Bui The year journalism teaches again
Mathew Ingram The Faustian Facebook dance continues
Almar Latour Thanks, #fakenews
Cory Haik Navigating power in Trump’s America
Javaun Moradi What can we own?
Cindy Royal Preparing the digital educator-scholar hybrid
Molly de Aguiar Philanthropists galvanize around news
Tim Griggs The year we stop taking sides
Juliette De Maeyer and Dominique Trudel A rebirth of populist journalism
David Weigel A test for online speech
Andrea Silenzi Podcasts dive into breaking news analysis
Liz Danzico The triumph of the small
Moreno Cruz Osório The year of transparency in Brazilian journalism
Liz McMillen The year of deep insights
Corey Ford The year of the rebelpreneur
S.P. Sullivan Baking transparency into our routines
Rasmus Kleis Nielsen News after advertising may look like news before advertising
Andy Rossback The year of the user
Dan Gillmor Fix the demand side of news too
Carrie Brown-Smith We won’t do enough
Samantha Barry Messaging apps go mainstream
Sarah Marshall Focusing on the why of the click
Ernst-Jan Pfauth Earn trust by working for (and with) readers
Dannagal G. Young The return of the gatekeepers
Juan Luis Sánchez Your predictions are our present
Erin Pettigrew A year of reflection in tech
Dhiya Kuriakose The year of digital detoxing
Olivia Ma The year collaboration beats competition
Claire Wardle Verification takes center stage
Ray Soto VR moves from experiments to immersion
David Skok What lies beyond paywalls
Jim Friedlich A banner year for venture philanthropy
Francesco Marconi The year of augmented writing
Lee Glendinning A call for great editing
Hillary Frey Forests need to burn to regrow
Alice Antheaume A new test for French media
Ariane Bernard Better data about your users
Ashley C. Woods Local journalism will fight a new fight
Adam Thomas The coming collaboration across Europe
Ole Reißmann Un-faking the news
Mario García Virtual reality on mobile leaps forward
Geetika Rudra Journalism is community