ABSTRACT
Social media videos as a news format, despite its relevance—particularly among young audiences, have received little academic attention. This format caters to the temporal rhythms of the audience’s everyday life and in this sense, vies for eyeballs in an “attention economy.” The generally short, attention-seeking “clickbait” segments of these videos may not, therefore, be compatible with reporting complex topics such as climate change. The aim of this chapter is to analyze the social media video news format and assess how climate change is reported. A content analysis (n=60) was carried out with four Spanish-language digital-born media outlets specifically dedicated to the production of social media news videos. The results suggest that the social media video news format does indeed cater to an attention economy, but interestingly and despite this, climate coverage is diverse and the complexities of the crisis are communicated through a range of temporal positions.
