Instagram has announced that it will now surface Stories from official health bodies that you follow higher in your Stories feed, in order to help increase the distribution of key COVID-19 updates and information.
Starting today, we’ll bring Stories related to COVID-19 from credible health organizations you follow closer to the top of your tray. This is part of our ongoing work to connect people with accurate information, and we’ll be rolling out a similar solution for Feed next week.
— Instagram Comms (@InstagramComms) May 5, 2020
As Instagram notes, it’s also looking to give official health information a boost in the main feed as well.
This only relates to health organizations that you’ve chosen to follow, so it won’t increase the reach of such messaging across the board, and it won’t change anything for those who don’t want such in their Insta feed. But for those who may be using Instagram to stay connected to key updates, now they’ll be easier to find within the two streams.
The initiative adds to Instagram’s various COVID-19 relief and support efforts, including new fundraising tools, local business support options and its ‘Stay Home‘ and ‘Thank You‘ Stories stickers to help users share their support for key health messages.
Both of the latter options also enable users to add their Stories frames to a collective group Story, showcasing community support, which adds another element to its efforts to boost critical COVID-19 messaging.
If you follow a health authority on Instagram, you can expect to see their posts and Stories appearing more frequently in your stream – and if you don’t and you want to keep up on the latest, it may be worth looking up the WHO and others and giving them a follow.
