The 90-Second War: How Viral Videos Redefined Conflict in 2025

A displacement camp in Sudan running out of supplies. A 2,000-year-old mosque in Gaza lying in ruins. A brawl breaking out in the Turkish parliament. Throughout 2025, the world's tragedies and conflicts filled our screens. But the way we consumed them changed dramatically. They arrived not as in-depth reports, but as visceral, bite-sized videos, often under 90 seconds long. This isn't just a shift in format; it's a fundamental rewiring of how we perceive and react to global events.

Where news organizations once prioritized context, they now compete in an attention economy dominated by short-form video. This year, even legacy media outlets packaged complex stories into clips designed for maximum impact in minimum time. An Al Jazeera video on Israeli arms firms' record profits clocked in at 2 minutes and 29 seconds, while another on a parliamentary brawl was a mere 46 seconds. Complex geopolitical issues are being distilled into potent, emotional shots.

**Tech Deep Dive: Engagement Algorithms** These are the core engines of social media platforms. They measure how users interact with content—likes, shares, comments, and most importantly, watch time. Based on this engagement data, the algorithm decides whether to push the content to a wider audience. The critical flaw: the algorithm prioritizes what provokes a strong reaction, not what's nuanced, contextual, or necessarily true.

At the heart of this transformation is technology: the engagement algorithm. To keep users scrolling, platforms prioritize content that triggers the strongest emotional responses—outrage, shock, or sorrow. The result is a fragmented and decontextualized view of reality. While this can rapidly raise awareness for a cause, it also fosters 'compassion fatigue' and encourages a simplistic, good-versus-evil worldview, stripping away the complexities that define these conflicts.