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March ‘22 Blog
This Week at ViralMoment
…was tough to write about.
We’ll keep it short by expressing our unconditional support for the people of Ukraine, their resilience, and the power of their unified voice in the face of adversity.
In the spirit of helping our community discover the most influential moments in media, we also feel compelled to share our insights on how to approach trending content at a time when disinformation is poised to go viral.
Beyond the FYP
Let’s talk localization.
In last week’s newsletter, we discussed some of the parallels between the silver screen and the handheld one. This week, we discovered another trend that made its way onto both.
Enter localization: a process that makes content adaptable to a specific country or region.
On Monday morning, the Los Angeles Times reported that in 2021, viewership of dubbed (aka translated via voiceover) programming totaled 5 million minutes on Netflix: a 120% increase from the year prior. In the words of Netflix’s director of globalization in the LA Times:
“We believe that great stories are universal. They travel, they connect people, and that is the driver for us…wanting to not make language a barrier and in fact make it an asset to connect those stories and those emotional moments.”
The movement towards making content location-agnostic by increasing its accessibility is the key takeaway here – especially as we look towards the way information is being shared during times of crisis.
Ukraine-related content has gone viral – here are some quick TikTok analytics numbers we pulled from Wired:
From February 20th to February 28th, viewership of videos tagged with #Ukraine saw a:
167% increase in total views
1.3 billion increase in views per day
928,000 views per minute
Dispelling Disinformation
Where there’s smoke, there’s fire.
Live footage of scenes from Ukraine has been at the forefront of the conversation. And yet, one of the creators whose videos garnered the highest traffic was posting them from a different country. Marta Vasyuta amassed over 150,000 followers while posting from the UK, and even following a temporarily-issued ban on her profile, the reach of her videos went far and wide across other social media forums.
Another influencer who posted a TikTok showing how to drive an abandoned Russian APC also went viral. But the content she actually used to make the video was recorded a year ago – completely unrelated to the current war in Ukraine.
Both are examples of disinformation. And even though the content itself isn’t explicitly malicious, it remains harmful.
“It casts suspicion on the well of information coming from actual Ukrainians and journalists on social media by making it increasingly difficult for those watching to believe that what they’re seeing is real.”
When it comes to achieving virality on a platform that’s designed to reward the most consumable, emotive content is king – and heavy is the head that wears that crown.
During a time of crisis, the universality of emotive content is also what makes it the most dangerous. Disinformation is a shapeshifting foe – it can take many forms in its attempts to go viral. As we continue to scroll and share in the coming weeks, we must also remember that the intention behind sharing a story matters less than the effects of its reach.
The most powerful kind of localization is the kind that doesn’t need to be done. The most powerfully emotive content – visuals or sounds that spark a reaction – doesn’t call for translation. Emotion remains language-agnostic.
After all, great stories are universal.