OU Alumna Answers Our Questions About Being a Digital Culture Reporter

by Abby Neff

Kat Tenbarge graduated from Ohio University's Honor Tutorial College in 2019. Photo provided by Kat Tenbarge.

As a teenager, Kat Tenbarge spent much of her time on the internet, exploring content creators through Youtube and Tumblr. Now, as a reporter for Insider in New York City, Tenbarge and her colleagues have laid the ground work for the publication’s digital culture section.

Tenbarge graduated from Ohio University’s Honors Tutorial College in 2019, where she studied journalism and environmental studies. During her time as a student at OU, she interned at Cinci City Beat in her hometown of Cincinnati and spent a semester in Columbus her sophomore year covering public affairs for The Columbus Dispatch. She was the editorin-chief of The New Political, OU's student-run, non-partisan publication, before she interned in New York City for Inverse, a science and tech company where she started to report on digital culture.

What does a typical day as a digital culture reporter look like?

It varies, especially from publication to publication. My career is definitely modeled after [New York Times internet culture reporter] Taylor Lorenz, who is an amazing mentor and a really great person. Everyone should read Taylor’s reporting; I feel like everyone already does.

Usually in the morning, I start going on Twitter and Instagram. And looking at discussion, I follow a bunch of accounts that are like ‘tea channels’ and drama channels, and then I follow a bunch of Instagram pages, and just people in general, I follow all of the major influencers that I write about.

I usually try to start the day with a shorter article that doesn’t require a lot of original reporting, or any at all sometimes … I try to wrap that up by noon. And that kind of gets me going for the day. Then I usually work on longer projects. I usually interview at least one person a day for either a longer, ongoing feature or investigation or for something shorter. I usually am juggling several projects on the backburner. Time management may not be my greatest strength, but I usually find myself spending a lot of my weekdays juggling all of my little things I’m looking into.

What projects are you working on now?

I feel like a lot of times people are surprised by what I work on. Because I do investigate, I do investigative work and that’s probably my favorite thing to do. I have two investigative projects on the back burner ... There’s a feature that I’m working on with a co-worker … During the pandemic, YouTube has relied more on automation bots in the review process and the video flagging process, and they have this new policy where you’re not allowed to spread coronavirus misinformation on YouTube. But their bots have mistakenly identified a slew of videos that are debunking coronavirus myths as spreading coronavirus misinformation … we talked to a few creators who had their videos removed incorrectly and couldn’t get in contact with YouTube about it.

I also interviewed a drama YouTuber, who I love, a commentary channel with D’Angelo Wallace.

What interview with a social media influencer do you find the most memorable?

I think my favorite person I have interviewed is probably Elijah Daniel. He’s so nice in real life … Right before the world ended, he had a tour stop in Brooklyn. And I went, and I went early and shadowed him for the night… He is one of the creators who, I feel like, is more wholesome. He is smart and does not attract negative controversy to grow bigger, per se. He’s a fun person to talk to, and someone who I felt like was more uplifting.

What is the dynamic between influencers and their followers?

I got to go to Playlist [Live] this year, which was a really cool reporting experience … Someone like James Charles, for example; he definitely has a way more interesting relationship with his fans than … a traditional celebrity might through social media, because a lot of internet celebrities are in group chats, Twitter DMs, Discord, Patreon servers with their fans, so a lot of them end up communicating directly with them.

There’s almost a hierarchy of fans for some people, because there are some fans who might have talked to the person privately, and maybe have like some sort of, almost friendship, mutual relationship [with them]. That can also become very, very dicey. Especially when you have these younger influencers, who may exchange sexual content with their fans, or get in fights with their fan groups. There [are] weird, unhealthy dynamics that emerge from it ... There’s also just such little supervision and scrutiny when it comes to some of the smaller or even bigger TikTok creators–it’s an unprecedented amount of communication and connection that they have with their audiences. But they’re all very young, and the dynamic can become very toxic very quickly.

In your observation, how has the spread of the coronavirus affected social media? Specifically, the behavior of influencers?

I feel like when the coronavirus first really erupted across the country, and it was clear that we were going to have to quarantine for a while, a lot of people … certainly some prominent people expressed, ‘Could this be the end of influencers?’ Which was never that good of a take, because influencers are perfectly suited for a pandemic. They make most of their content, either at home or in LA where they already live, and they have created a connection with people online, which is where people went more than ever for entertainment and human connection, which influencers excel at. I personally think that the pandemic was phenomenal for the success of influencers, because TikTok exploded in a way that it hadn’t before.

How will the pandemic affect digital culture and the behavior of influencers in the future?

I really do think that we are going to see, as we’ve already seen [a], continued increase of attention that is paid to the stars, money that these social stars are generating, [and] relevance that they have in general society. Addison Rae, I think, is the star of the generation. Maybe I’ll eat my words in a few years, maybe her relevancy will die out, but I just see her as ‘the girl next door’ for Gen Z.