Future Audiences/Generated Video

Future Audiences is exploring strategies to expand beyond our existing audiences of readers and contributors so we can truly reach everyone in the world as the “essential infrastructure of the ecosystem of free knowledge”. This includes investigating ways to reach young audiences and provide them the opportunity to learn from Wikimedia projects, as well as a path to become Wikimedia editors.

Building on last year’s research and insights on short video platforms and creators, who often get their information from Wikipedia without telling their readers this is the case, we are beginning an experiment with generating short videos – starting by repurposing existing community content (English Wikipedia “Did You Know?”s), and measuring how these videos perform on TikTok and other short video platforms (Instagram Reels, YouTube Shorts).

Experiment FAQs

Why short video?

We see experimenting with publishing short videos on popular short video platforms as an opportunity to understand how to connect with a large global audience of young people who are not already visiting Wikimedia projects.

According to our yearly Brand Health surveys, young global internet users report lower awareness and usage of Wikipedia than older individuals, meaning there is a share of young people who aren’t getting information from Wikimedia projects.
Among young people, short video platforms continue to grow as a popular destination not just for entertainment, but for news and educational content.
Last year’s social video creator’s research indicated that there are many popular and successful short video creators who a) create edu-tainment content on a variety of topics, and b) often get their information from Wikipedia without telling their audiences that this is the case.

Is there a risk of damaging Wikipedia’s brand or enriching a non-free company’s brand by publishing content on TikTok?

TikTok is a very popular platform among young people, which is our main motivation for experimenting with publishing content there. Like all large for-profit online platforms today, it also faces serious criticism and regulatory pressure for unethical practices and harms. It is currently banned in India and is under threat of being banned in the United States. However, this has not deterred a large number of well-known media companies, nonprofit organizations, politicians, and other notable individuals and organizations globally from establishing a presence on TikTok. We believe that the risk of not taking the opportunity to learn how young people might engage with our content in new ways – as these other organizations have done – outweighs the risk of reputational harm from publishing content there. We are also not solely focusing on TikTok and are also planning to experiment on other social media platforms, including Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts.

What are we hoping to learn?

October 2024:

Does remixing existing Wikimedia content into short video on popular platforms like TikTok help us bring free knowledge to new audiences? (i.e., younger audiences who we know are less likely to visit Wikimedia projects directly) while also celebrating content created by our communities.

November 2024 – January 2025:

What kinds of encyclopedic-based content do younger audiences want to see and engage with on short video platforms? E.g., evergreen knowledge content, trivia/fun facts, topical content/current events, other? We will begin with testing trivia/fun facts curated by the English Wikipedia Did You Know? (DYK) community but may bring in other kinds of content.
What kind of content presentations are most successful on the platform? E.g., short image + facts, longer-form deep dive on topics? We will be testing a mix of short/simple remixed fun facts using generative AI tools + more complex hand-produced content.

Other potential learnings:

Can bringing our content to these platforms with clear attribution improve younger audiences’ awareness and usage of our projects?
Can we encourage other content creators on TikTok and other short video apps to attribute properly when reusing facts and images from Wikimedia projects?

What metrics will we be tracking?

Key metrics

Views on content
Viewer demographics (age, gender, region)
Engagement on content (likes, comments, shares, saves)
Engagement from broader TikTok community (Duet, Stitch, mentions)
Qualitative feedback (via surveys, Brand Health Tracker, etc.)

We will be comparing reach, engagement, and demographic data across different short video platforms.

How to stay updated on insights from this experiment

As usual, we will be sharing updates on this and other Future Audiences experiments during our monthly open community calls. Please sign up here if you’d like to be notified for upcoming calls.

If you have any further questions/inputs please get in touch on the talk page!