THE INFLUENCE OF SHORT-FORM VIDEO TRENDS ON THE FORMS AND FEATURES OF LONG-FORM VIDEO CONTENT ON THE EXAMPLE OF THE YOUTUBE PLATFORM

Cao Yingfei

Short vertical clips have turned into the prevailing model of video consumption: according to YouTube , by mid-2025 the Shorts format was gathering over 200 billion views per day, against no more than 70 billion a year earlier. The joint presence of short clips and multi-minute publications on a single platform creates a tension between the logic of rapid engagement and the logic of holding the viewer in prolonged viewing, while the question of whether the short format displaces the long one or reshapes it from within remains open. The aim of the work is to identify the mechanisms by which short-video trends alter the dramaturgy, editing rhythm and compositional segmentation of long-form content on YouTube . Typological and structural-functional analysis of formats is used, along with a comparison of engagement parameters based on open platform statistics for 2024–2026. It is shown that the pressure of short clips manifests not in trimming the running time of long videos but in transferring into them clip-style retention techniques — a condensed opening, the splitting of narration into self-contained segments, the visual marking of semantic transitions. The leading role of Shorts as a channel of primary discovery of an author indicates that the short and long formats form co-subordinate links of a single attention funnel, in which the long video keeps the function of in-depth retention while borrowing the tools of capture from the short one.

Keywords:short-form video, long-form video content, YouTube video hosting, clip-thinking, digital video formats, audience engagement, transformation of media consumption.