Social Media as Television: Didn't We Try This Already?
Some expanded commentary of the first shift in "4 social media shifts the church should know about" on ERLC.com
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This is the first of four posts adding some additional commentary to my recent piece on ERLC.com, “4 social media shifts the church should know about”. Each of the four shifts could be an entire article by themselves, and there is much more that could be said about each of them. Over the next several weeks, I will be providing some additional insight to the shifts in that article, as well as opening up Substack Chat for additional discussion with readers. My coauthor for this piece, Ian Harber, will join as well!
The first shift we will examine is arguably the most important shift of the four: the consolidation of social media towards short-form video. Whether you know them by TikToks, Shorts, Reels, or you’re old enough to remember Vines, the future of social media is video. But before we dive into what that means, there is a massive elephant in the room that must be addressed first: the Pivot-to-Video Era of 2015-2018.
Didn’t We Try This Once Already?
A common reaction that I’ve heard to this first shift is a sense of deja-vu - didn’t this already happen once? Most people are referring to the period of time from late 2015-2018 where Facebook began aggressively pushing video in users feeds, encouraging and empowering users to post full length videos or do Facebook Live streams. The Chicken Littles at the time were proclaiming that video was the future of social media, and yet that clearly didn’t happen - why is this time different?
Let’s be clear on one thing: the pivot-to-video era was very real. I should know - beginning in late 2017, I began a very video-centered social media strategy for my church, concentrated entirely on Facebook. For nearly a year and a half, before Facebook revealed their new Groups-focused emphasis with FB5, I spent multiple hours a week cranking out sermon clips, announcement videos, and running Facebook Live streams, all in the name of putting jet fuel into our FB page’s performance. The shares were through the roof, the engagements were at an all-time high, and the views blew our podcast numbers out of the water - why wouldn’t we pivot to video when the numbers were too good to be true?
Of course, when something seems too good to be true, it usually is. Facebook was padding the number of numbers of certain view metrics in an attempt to woo advertisers into spending more ad dollars for videos. Multiple lawsuits were filed, but no amount of restitution for wasted ad dollars could undo the scorched-earth devastation Facebook wrought to the careers of countless writers, copy editors, graphic designers, or anyone else who got the boot to make room for videographers, video editors, and all the equipment needed to compete in the “new golden age” of social video.
So what changed? Why is this time different? Simple: the first time, Facebook was on the offensive. This time, the entire industry is on the defense of TikTok’s unstoppable growth.
The Platform Eater
In 2018, Facebook was the most important social media platform on the Internet. It was a titan that was beginning to rival Google, and having swallowed up Instagram and the rest of the social media space, Zuckerberg set his eyes on stealing Google’s social media thunder - YouTube. It was the one thing Facebook lacked, and if Zuckerberg could get the Video Stone, his Infinity Gauntlet would be complete. One snap would wipe all forms of competition - text, photos, groups, messaging, and videos - out of existence.
In 2022, the situation couldn’t be more different. Facebook (now Meta), once the center of gravity for the entire social media industry, is now a rapidly dying star. It’s hard to say when exactly TikTok ate the internet, but at some point in the last two years, the Chinese-owned short-form video platform evolved and became something more than just a video platform for trendy dances. As one disinformation researcher put it, “We’re [now] talking about a platform that’s shaping how a whole generation is learning to perceive the world.”
And just to be clear: this isn’t just a Gen Z thing. 1 in 10 Americans now use TikTok as a news source; if they’re under 30, it’s 1 in 4. In a somewhat unexpected change, TikTok is now becoming a search engine that is not only competing effectively with Google, but even forcing Google to change its own search engine to adapt. The future of our politics is not in cable news or Twitter threads, but in the form of embodied memes. And the rest of social media is breathlessly attempting to catch up: YouTube recently announced a stellar monetization plan for Shorts creators, while Meta continues to aggressively signal that more Reels will appear on Facebook or Instagram - whether you like it or not.
All this adds up to one inescapable truth: this is not a repeat of the Pivot-to-Video Era. This is something completely different, something far more encompassing and far reaching. You cannot immunize yourself from TikTok’s expansive influence if you refuse to download the app, because soon all of the apps you use will reflect the influence of TikTok in some way1.
Out with the Magazines, In with the Green Screens
These shifts do more than signal a massive shift in the kind of content people consume; it also signals a massive shift in the skills needed to make the content that people want to consume.
Up to this point, social media has functioned as an extension of a newspaper or magazine. Text, accompanied with graphics or photos, was the driving material for everyone not named YouTube, and this environment naturally rewarded those with the skillsets necessary to write for a newspaper or magazine. While the Big Three accommodated videos (and in the case of Facebook, tried really hard to make fetch happen), video was at the margin of these platforms; if you could write good copy, take good photos, or make eye-catching graphics, the sky was the limit for what you could accomplish.
With this industry-wide shift to video, however, new skillsets are required. Text, photography, and graphics are now marginal skillsets in service of more fundamental ones: videography, lighting, editing, broadcast announcing, and so much more. Where social media used to have significant overlap with a magazine or newspapers, now it increasingly has more in common with a television or radio station. As platforms now shift towards competing with TikTok, the options to run social media as a newspaper are diminishing. Soon, the only game in town will be a short-form video platform of you choice, or a radio station proxy in the form of the ever-expanding growth of podcasts (speaking of which, subscribe to Breaking the Digital Spell wherever you get your podcasts!).
The Silver Lining for Churches
What does this all mean for churches? As I said earlier, each of these shifts could be an article on their own, and this one is especially true. At some point, I plan to write more on this paradigm-shifting exchange between Charlie Warzel and Kevin Munger on the death of literacy culture as a result of short-form video’s explosive growth - as the latter said elsewhere, “basically overnight, the institutions that governed society (and which were run on words) have been cannibalized. We are tweeting among the ruins2.”
But there is a strange silver lining for churches here. Cumulatively, the other three shifts in my ERLC piece signal a comprehensive shift for how churches do social media, one that overwhelmingly disadvantages local institutional presence. And yet, one benefit of that disadvantage is this: a crappy cell phone video is all you need to do short form video well.
In the pivot-to-video era, companies invested significant money into cameras, microphones, and other gear to make their videos look sleek and polished. In that period of time, my church carved out an entire room for me to use as a studio to expedite filming social media content. But when you look at TikToks, Shorts, and Reels, the video quality is bottom-of-the-barrel. Someone talking into a front-facing smartphone camera into their stock Apple earbuds can get hundreds of thousands of views depending on the topic. The appeal of short form video is that you don’t need to know three-point lighting or good EQ techniques to make videos that people want to watch. So long as you seem sincere and authentic, you have a shot at building an audience.
This means that, for churches, you likely possess all the equipment you need to make short-form video content that people want to watch. You don’t need to carve out a studio room, or learn Premiere Pro, or even have a powerful computer to do this. If you’re willing to put your phone camera in front of your face (or on a desk tripod) and talk, you’ve done the lion’s share of the work. Highly branded or overproduced videos can even be viewed with an eye of suspicion, and videos that are obviously repurposed YouTube videos are swiped away for the obvious imitators that they are. The barrier for entry is as low as the phone in your pocket.
Of course, as we wrote in the article: “If you lack the resources (and the majority of churches lack the resources), you should not invest in half-baked, short-term video projects that cannot be sustained over time. Video will quickly deplete resources you could more effectively deploy elsewhere.” If you’ve never interacted with short form video, even as a consumer, the first step to making good short form videos is to spend time watching others first. Pull up YouTube and start watching shorts, or searching for shorts based on topics you’re interested in. As someone who is a curmudgeon when it comes to new things: you might like what you find!
Substack Chat
Speaking of new things, I am going to begin using Substack Chat with each of my posts from here on out. I welcome Substack’s development in tools to compete with Twitter, and the more time I can spend on here, the better. Substack Chat is only available on the mobile app, so if you’re reading on email or desktop, consider downloading the app!
Here is my question to prime the pump for this piece: what excites or scares you the most about short form video? I’ve got plenty of examples to share, but Ian and I both want to hear from you!
Thanks for reading Passing Through Digital Babylon. The week after Christmas, I will be writing on how social media is becoming geographically neutral, and what that means for institutions who have long used social media to reach their immediate communities. If you enjoyed this piece, please consider sharing it on your socials or texting it to a friend who might enjoy it too!
Together, we are passing through Digital Babylon,
Austin.
Recently, there has been speculation the Department of Homeland Security may block access to TikTok in the states. I overwhelmingly support this, but one error I’ve seen multiple times is that if TikTok gets blocked, short form video goes away. Nothing could be further from the truth. If TikTok gets blocked, all the creators working on that platform will migrate to YouTube, who has already been preparing for such an exodus. The demand for short form video is here to stay, regardless of where it is supplied.