The development of the internet has brought about an information explosion, but the day is only 24 hours long. A movie takes two hours, and a TV series can be even longer, stretching out to dozens of hours or even longer (in the case of soap operas). Given the limitations of our capacity to see, the human instinct for absorbing more information has spawned short video platforms. This not only allows us to access more information in a simpler format, but also changes information itself.
Speed is king
Everyone on a short video platform is a disseminator of information, or a “media” themselves. Therefore, information dissemination is no longer constrained by time and space, but can be updated anytime, anywhere. The challenge is that this speed and design determine what content becomes viral. A short video of just over ten seconds, or an image with music, can quickly spread globally and even garner millions of likes—assuming the content is tailored to the algorithm’s needs. The algorithm, in turn, tracks user usage at every moment, leveraging big data to analyze user psychology: what content is popular? What content doesn’t have a high completion rate? What content generates the most comments? The result is that videos longer than 15 or 30 seconds are prone to throttling if their completion rate is low, and more complex and slower content seems to be excluded from more viewers.
This means that all content design and creation must factor in how to be more popular, more engaging, and more rapid: history explained in jokes, news told like gossip, emotion replacing evidence. Short-form video platforms don’t just convey information; they edit it.
From storytelling to summarizing
Movie summaries, one-minute book reviews—these aren’t just trends, but entirely new formats born for short videos. A two-hour film becomes a ten-minute critique; a hundred-page book is condensed into a few sentences and emojis. This is how information gets shaped and transformed.
This isn’t always a bad thing. For many, short videos offer a window—a way to explore art, ideas, and cultures they might never have encountered otherwise. But at the same time, stories are shortened, emotions amplified, and context disappears. Carefully curated yet overly brief snippets and formats create only edited feelings, not experiences.
A new kind of information
So what kind of information does the short video medium convey? It’s fast, emotional, visual, and fragmented—like a kind of “liquid information,” its flow more like entertainment than education.
But it also democratizes communication. Anyone can upload a video, voice their ideas, create, and share. Small-town students can reach millions of viewers, artisans can teach online, and nurses can explain medical knowledge in a simple way.
This is the paradox: short videos make information more accessible, but also more fluid. They open the door to a voice for once-voiceless groups, but they also blur the lines between truth and emotion, depth and speed.
Some thoughts?
Short-video platforms mirror our own desires—for speed, for emotion, for connection—and amplify them through the design. They have changed messages, but they also changed us. We read faster, react quicker, forget sooner.
But the choice still belongs to us. Not villains. Not saviors. Just signals—shaped by the way we choose to live in.
Recent Comments