If you’d ask me, the first (and probably only) source, via which people of my generation are exposed to global headlines and news, are social media platforms, most likely Instagram, TikTok, X and eventually YouTube. The format is mostly the same: short, easily digestible and accessible videos, collages of digitally circulating footage and comments of individual, mostly private people.
(Today shall be about those private or non-journalistic accounts, while I talk about the digital presence of “official” (stately) new outlets and channels and therefore the shift in journalism in another blog)
As always, the medium is the message and shapes the content enormously.
While news outlets are supposed to transport information as neutral and reliable as possible, content on platforms like Instagram and TikTok is mostly designed to “go viral”, by having consumers click on, engage with and share the posts. The easiest route to viral content here is providing entertainment, in form of humour, satire, reenactments, compilations, use of popular soundtracks and more.
What happens when an incident of global attention and media coverage turns into subject of those posts aiming to entertain is greatly illustrated by the recent Louvre heist.
On October 19, 2025, thieves broke into the Louvre in Paris around 9:30am, when the exhibitions were already open to the public, and successfully stole eight jewellery pieces from the “Galerie d’Apollon” before leaving the crime scene on scooters.
The theft stirred enormous attention because of several aspects.
First, the institution of the Louvre, originally a palace to the French Royalties, today is the world’s most visited museum, location of some of the world’s most famous (art) works like Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa, and therefore representing the French state and its wealth and history.
That a theft like this would even be possible in a place like the Louvre caused wide disbelief and even outrage, especially because over the course of the French history, the valuable artworks and objects of the Louvre and other places were turned from property of the royal family and state, over to the entire French people after the French Revolution. The theft might therefore be considered by some a direct attack on the heart of French culture and history. Others are raising concerns about security and protection, especially after it turned out that apparently not all rooms that were entered by the thieves, were surveyed by cameras.
On the other side of reactions, especially when turning to digital content covering the incident on platforms like Instagram and TikTok, popularity and attention here originates from the more ironic and even humorous aspects of the robbery.
In numerous videos on social media platforms, people are for example pointing out the irony of the thieves only “starting their day” at the comfortable hour of 9:30am, instead of – like we might expect, a robbery happening in the dark night. The further simplicity of the theft draws a similarly ironic picture: instead of massive explosions, upheaval and alarms, the 4 people, dressed as inconspicuous workers in yellow west, entered silently through a balcony they reached with a ladder that seemed to belong to construction work and left the place quite ordinarily on scooters (while apparently loosing one of the valuable necklaces on their way).
The whole operation appears more like a comedy than anything else to some people, which provides perfect material for such tongue-in-cheek videos.
While most of the posts are clearly framed as comedy, popular phenomena like this also quickly become a breeding ground for false information.
A young, fashionable man who has been spotted at the Louvre shortly after the robbery was reported by many as the hired detective of the case, turning the whole affair even more into a “classic French crime mystery”. However, he was a 15-year old boy, who just happened to be there at the time, showing how quickly content can go viral, even under false claims.
What is even more remarkable, is a common internet phenomenon that also appears here: people “romanticising” the Louvre heist (or any other event), imagining scenarios in which the thieves are a group of young, well dressed friends, planning out a robbery as a fun Sunday activity to – and here comes an interesting twist – serve justice to, basically, the entire world.
People online are “rooting” for the thieves, who are turned into some sort of modern “Robin Hood”, symbolic figures who “take back power” in social systems with stark imbalances between extreme wealth and poverty.
The Louvre heist is multiple times put into relation with US president Donald Trump’s plans to build an immense Ballroom at the White House, a project of enormous costs and lots of criticism in times of inflation, health and social care crisis and an overall sense of people from all over the world to be let down by their governments and rulers.
The possibilities of imagination, social critique, fiction and humour, that media like Instagram and Co offer, become the message: global incidents like the Louvre heist are turned into subjects of social, shared affect, creating common ground, bonds and community, that exceed national borders.
The posts don’t serve as neutral information, but coated in humorous formats, lay bare the social and political climate of their time.
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