Anna Bressanin
US editor BBC Reel
Eleonore Finkelstein
editor-in-chief Brut.America
Dave Jorgenson
The Washington Post
Valentina Park
head of audience The News Movement
TikTok is the world’s most downloaded app. At first primarily associated with teenagers dancing, the addictive short-video platform from China sparks controversy while, at the same time, offering a completely new format to cover the most urgent topics, from the war in Ukraine to climate change. It's habit forming, it’s hard to stop watching. Have we finally found the cure for news avoidance?
News outlets that are native to TikTok swear that they can meet a younger audience where they are, while legacy publications are trying hard to reach Gen Z on TikTok and bring them back to their websites. Confused video editors considered switching to extremely short videos, only to find out that TikTok videos can now be 10 min long. An infinite scroll of truly joyous, user-generated content mixes with newsgathering, while disturbing images continue to plague TikTok as well, and exponentially increase every second. Is it only a matter of packaging the same content in a different way, or is our brain and the way we consume narratives dramatically changing?
This panel will focus on the impact of social media narratives on video formats and journalism.
Organised in association with BBC Reel.
