I think one of the negative effects of digital media is that everything has to be short
Unless it's another sodding video, or worse - a podcast.
I suspect this is a sign of age – unless there's specific visual information, I don't see the point of having someone stand in front of a screen and read a script. Of course, then people have to make pointless animations or make people stand in the middle of field to give it 'some value.' I could have read the information in 30 seconds, but no, now I have to sit there for 5 minutes. But marketing will insist 'it needs a video' and sadly, they're probably right.
The mega-Global Data-Mining Corporation of Menlo Park, USAnia deserve some of the blame for this. They've been
inflating their engagement figures for videos for years, to the effect that all the marketroids believe that people pay more attention to video than text. Hence everything's a video.
Podcasts, I suppose, are useful for those that like the opportunity to listen to something while doing something else, but again, I'd rather read the transcript.
My objection to podcasts - other than having become rather culturally Deaf in 16 odd years of living with barakta
[1] - is that I can't listen to speech in a moving vehicle without being unreasonable travel-sick, and if I'm not in a moving vehicle, reading is much higher bandwidth. And as a general rule I'd rather read an essay than a transcript.
In principle, podcasts are brilliant - anyone can make a radio programme about something interesting and find a relevant audience. Just not something I really have room for in my life. I accept that other people will have good reasons (eg. dyslexia or visual impairment, or spending a lot of time on the move) for thinking the exact opposite.
Videos I mind less, iff the subject matter justifies the use of video in the first place. As someone who doesn't have speakers connected to my computer, I do wish people would subtitle them properly. No, I'm not putting my headphones on just to find out what your 45 seconds of talking head is saying.
But the bane of my media experience are the Twitter stories. There's a good dozen in the Guardian today. Reporting on people being angry or offended on Twitter, illustrated with their Tweets. It's not news, not everyone uses Twitter, and frankly I don't care what people on Twitter think (if indeed they do, which I doubt). It's just lazy journalism to fill space cheaply.
It's the way they use screenshots of tweets, as if that were somehow authentically documenting an event, rather than linking to them like Berners-Lee intended.
Images of text is a big enough problem on Twitter. We don't need the media encouraging it.
[1] I've basically given up on radio; unless there's a specific programme that's worth putting my headphones on for, I won't deliberately generate confusing background noise for no good reason.