Recording In Progress

The head of Instagram, Adam Mosseri, shared that the driving force behind the increased engagement and reach rate of reels stems from video content “driving an immense amount of growth online for all major platforms." These platforms include Instagram, Facebook, Tiktok, and even YouTube. TikTok's popularity during the pandemic skyrocketed in video-based media, prompting other platforms to adopt this media form. They are called YouTube shorts and allow creators on the platform to utilize their same following and create short content based on their longer videos.

The move from static to video content over the course of a few years can be traced back to TikTok’s popularity and the decrease in human attention span. More and more people are utilizing videos as a means of communication rather than the written word to reach a larger audience and gain followers.

So How does this affect Journalists?

Well, even though radio and broadcast journalism has been around for years, freelance journalism using video content has risen exponentially since the beginning of social media's inception. Aspiring journalists utilize video-based platforms, the technology in the palm of their hands, and their curiosity to investigate stories and report on them within minutes. Because of the video-content durability, videos have a higher chance of being seen if they are within a few minutes, which is where a lot of journalists have begun to operate, abandoning 2000-word features for a 30-second video with enough details to keep the audience interested.