Understanding How Personal Activities Are Shared In Short-form Videos

Abstract

Sharing activities that people do in everyday life, such as physical activity, health management, or hobbies, help people receive benefits like social support and positive self-presentation. Short-form videos present new opportunities for activity-sharing, which has traditionally been studied in static contexts like text- and image-sharing. We therefore aim to understand what information people incorporate into short-form activity videos, and how. We qualitatively analyzed 420 short-form activity videos on TikTok across three domains: running, studying, and sketching. We found people often present information before, during, and after activities, developing strategies for qualitatively and quantitatively incorporating activity-relevant information in each. We also uncover practices for aligning the sharing of activity-relevant information with the nature of short-form videos, such as modifying broader-scale goals into video-scale goals. We further discuss design opportunities and challenges for designers to create tools that support the practice, such as closer integration with tracking tools and encouraging narrative structure.