Analyzes How Short-Form Video Apps Affects Popular Culture and People's Entertainment
Abstract
In today's China, the popularity of short video media has brought about tremendous changes in the way of information dissemination and media development. Tik Tok, Kwai short format and other short format video applications will undoubtedly affect the way information is disseminated. This phenomenon also makes popular culture more infiltrate people's lives. The high frequency form of short video content makes people addicted to dopamine and releases it quickly. Long-term use will make people addicted to the fun of useless thinking. The so-called emptiness after happiness will cause people to fall into a vicious circle and lose their minds. By analyzing the background, reasons and current situation of the rise of short-format video software, this article explains how this new type of media affects the development of popular culture. In the context of the popularity of short videos, if the form and content of popular culture changes, which popular cultural carriers will be produced? The purpose of this research is to explore how these phenomena affect people's entertainment. Will these changes in entertainment methods have a more far-reaching impact?
Keywords: Entertainment, Popular culture, Short-form video, Tik Tok
Introduction
With the development of technology, mobile terminal media has become an important way for people to obtain information and knowledge. As an emerging media in recent years, people have been chasing short films (Kaye et al., 2020). Starting with videos, the content of short videos has also been converted into various forms, such as funny videos, popular science videos, teaching videos, etc. The ever-increasing pace of life makes people yearn for efficient and convenient access to information (Wang et al., 2019). Advances in technology have made it easier to read video information on mobile terminals. This promoted the birth and development of short films (Collie & Wilson-Barnao, 2020). The soil nourished by pop culture is the highly developed market economy of modern industrial society (Szeman & O’Brien, 2017). The number of users of short video software continues to increase, which has brought huge economic value to it, and the profitability of popular culture has made it quickly applied to short video media. Popular culture has expanded its communication capabilities and influence through emerging short video carriers. This article aims to analyze the characteristics of short video media, explore its impact on popular culture, and explore how this phenomenon affects people’s entertainment styles. Explore whether emerging media will exacerbate the impact of culture on people. Provide theoretical support for short video media and popular culture research.
Problem Statement
The way of public entertainment has changed because the rise of short video applications has affected the spread of popular culture.
- Do all short videos have an impact on popular culture?
- Have short videos affected the way the masses entertain?
- What is included in the recent short video?
- Did short videos really affect popular culture? Does this have an impact on popular entertainment? What aspects of popular culture are affected by short videos, and how does it affect popular entertainment?
Research Questions
- In what ways has the rise of short video software affected the transformation of popular culture?
- How do these changes affect people’s entertainment?
Purpose of the Study
Through exploring the background, reasons and current situation of the rise of short video media. Analyze how the characteristics of short video media affect the development of popular culture, and what positive and negative effects it has on the development of popular culture.
Research Methods
Through the investigation of the relevant literature of popular culture, the characteristics of popular culture are summarized.
Analyze how this feature is affected by short video media. Through the research and analysis of apps, websites, news and other materials, we can understand the characteristics and types of short video content, understand the proportion of popular culture in short video media, and judge the impact of short video media on popular culture.
Interview and talk to some short video users to understand the frequency of short video media in people's lives, so as to judge the degree of penetration of short video media in people's lives.
Findings
Cultural Compromise
The first point is that short videos have compromised our culture. In the original mode of thinking, culture is serious, but the current culture has to make concessions to entertainment in order to be inherited (Frank, 1998). Some people may think that culture must evolve with the times. Yes, culture should be integrated into modern culture, but it does not say that it should be ruled by pop and entertainment (Van Zoonen, 2005). Decades ago, television pushed cultural politics and religious education into entertainment, while short videos pushed it to entertainment for all, to fragmentation of time, to the decline of people’s ability to understand, and the portability of mobile phones as a material carrier. It defeated the last line of defense of human nature. Since then, entertainment has become pervasive, and the younger generation no longer has the same reading ability as the ancestors. The rise of short films has strengthened the commercial nature of popular culture. Popular culture is commoditized. It strives to maximize profits and often produces something that can be profitable (Fiske, 2010). The rise of short video software has brought more and more economic benefits to video traffic, which means that many users will make and publish video content for the purpose of making money. Most of the videos in short video software are based on popular cultural content. According to the "Tik Tok 2020 Short Video Content Report for the First Half of 2020", Tik Tok and Kuai Shou’s video content types with the fastest annual growth rate do not have knowledge categories. The top three categories are beautiful women, handsome guys, and funny stories. In the top500 bloggers of these two short video platforms, knowledge accounts for less than 5%, replaced by food, beauty, games, storytelling and funny, which account for 31.66%. There is a lot of information in these videos that can guide consumption, promote consumption or promote sales (Zuo & Wang, 2019). This phenomenon has undoubtedly intensified the continuous production and propagation of commercial popular culture works, and intensified the penetration of popular culture in people's lives.
Economic Benefit
The second point is that short videos have brought huge economic benefits. Short videos have driven about 20 billion economic growth and provided about several million jobs. It is very common to make money through video accounts. In China, it has become commonplace to trade commodities through short video platforms. As of December 2020, the number of short video users in China was 873 million, an increase of 100 million from March 2020, accounting for 88.3% of the total Internet users. The "Short Video User Value Research Report 2019H1" shows that after a busy day of work/study/life, only one form of entertainment is available, and 40% of netizens choose short videos, surpassing online videos. Users who watch short videos for 10-30 minutes a day account for 32%, and nearly 30% of users watch more than one hour. Short video works have gradually become an important carrier of new mass culture. In terms of user activity, Kuai Shou bloggers peaked at 19:00. Tik Tok fans were most active at 21-24: 26.3%, with an average daily active user volume of 500 million. The number of followers of a video account often determines the economic value of the account. Therefore, more and more people shoot or make videos in order to gain attention and traffic. Short video works have gradually operated in accordance with the laws of the market and have been occupied by popular culture. The short and direct way of expression also makes short videos help popular culture penetrate more deeply into people's lives.
Impact on Mass Entertainment
In the last part, I will explain how short videos affect people’s entertainment. In Neal's view, television and its media are the most typical things we entertain to death. Nowadays, the scale of entertainment has already shifted from the end of the television to the end of the network. The initial idea of short video application developers may be to help people use fragmented time to quickly obtain information or entertain themselves. But up to now, people spend more and more time on such applications, and many people spend continuous time watching short videos. This makes people's time fragmented by tens of seconds of video, and then people's thinking habits are also fragmented. The satisfaction brought by short video applications is too easy to get, and once you get used to this "low-hand" satisfaction, you don't want to do those "high investment" things anymore. When our brains are surrounded by this "high stimulus threshold" for a long time and get used to getting a lot of pleasure easily, we will gradually desensitize to this pleasure. Over time, this intensity of pleasure can no longer satisfy us, and we will need higher intensity, more sustained, and deeper stimulation. Relatively speaking, behaviors with less pleasure and higher pay, such as reading and thinking, naturally no one wants to do. The number of users of short video software continues to grow, and more and more people will watch short videos as a form of leisure and entertainment (Yaqi et al., 2021). The important reason for the popularity of short videos is that the video content stimulates the brain and causes the brain to release dopamine, which makes people continue to search for dopamine secreting content in the ocean of short videos, and ultimately indulge in behavior (Yang et al., 2020). This makes many people unable to resist the short-lived pleasure brought by the software, and the emptiness brought by this happiness will make people even more hope to use the software to have fun (Omar & Dequan, 2020). It is easy for people to gradually lose their minds and fall into a vicious circle. As a result, the length of time people use the software has gradually increased.
popular culture
The rise of short videos has made it easier for people to come into contact with popular culture. Popular culture itself has the meaning of entertaining the public (Edensor, 2020). As the most intuitive, attractive and easiest way to spread, video has always encountered great obstacles in the production process. The use of cameras and professional editing software requires a certain amount of time and cost to learn. Due to the rise of short video software, software developers have simplified video editing methods and added auxiliary functions to make it easier for people to make videos. This makes more and more people participate in the video creation process. This also makes it easier for people to get popular cultural works that they like, thus enriching people's spiritual life to a certain extent.
Conclusion
First of all, the rise of short video software has changed the way people obtain information. Popular culture continues to expand and penetrate with the help of new communication methods. Short video media helps popular culture be more easily displayed in people's lives in the form of video, making the dissemination of popular culture more efficient, convenient and direct. Makes popular culture permeate all corners of people's lives. However, the rise of short video media has made the commercial nature of popular culture more prominent. More and more advertisements use popular culture as the shell to achieve the purpose of promoting consumption. Then, the rise of short video media allowed popular culture to penetrate, and eventually led to a trend toward a single entertainment method. In short, short video media has promoted the penetration of popular culture in people's lives, but it has also expanded the negative and positive influence of popular culture.
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About this article
Publication Date
31 January 2022
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978-1-80296-122-5
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European Publisher
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123
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Communication, Media, Disruptive Era, Digital Era, Media Technology
Cite this article as:
Zhang, J. (2022). Analyzes How Short-Form Video Apps Affects Popular Culture and People's Entertainment. In J. A. Wahab, H. Mustafa, & N. Ismail (Eds.), Rethinking Communication and Media Studies in the Disruptive Era, vol 123. European Proceedings of Social and Behavioural Sciences (pp. 278-282). European Publisher. https://doi.org/10.15405/epsbs.2022.01.02.23