Fragmented Narratives and Context Loss in Short-Video News Communication

Abstract

Short-video platforms have become an important channel for news consumption, but their emphasis on brevity, speed, and visual impact can weaken the coherence of news narratives. This paper examines how short-video news becomes fragmented through narrative compression, selective editing, repeated circulation, and platform-driven distribution. It focuses on three forms of context loss: the separation of events from their temporal and causal background, the weakening of source and evidential information, and the use of emotional framing that encourages rapid judgment. The paper also discusses why later explanations, corrections, and longer follow-up reports do not always restore the missing context, especially when users encounter clips in an incomplete or disordered sequence. It argues that the problem is not shortness itself, but the presentation of partial information as if it were a complete account. To reduce misunderstanding, short-video news should preserve essential timelines, source labels, uncertainty markers, and links between initial reports and later updates. Effective context preservation requires cooperation among news producers, platforms, reposting accounts, and audiences.