SCMP uses personal narratives, explainer videos to keep people engaged in COVID content
- The Post addresses audience fatigue with COVID-related content by launching a series of explainer videos and framing pandemic stories with character-based narratives.
- The SCMP Explains series began with vaccine-focused videos, while the video team created COVID news content with more storytelling elements centred around frontline workers, patients and their families.
At the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, all eyes around the world were focused on China. The South China Morning Post (SCMP) was at the centre of that storm, reporting from the ground and publishing videos showing the chaos and fear at the initial epicentre of the disease.
As the virus spread around the world, reducing major cities to ghost towns, people confined in their homes turned to news providers in enormous numbers to find out the latest information.
SCMP saw a dramatic increase in traffic across our digital platforms, and our video traffic on YouTube and Facebook grew exponentially as we broadcast stories and images to millions of viewers. As the rest of the news media caught up with the story, this initial spike faded as competition increased. Nonetheless, interest in the global coronavirus story remained strong throughout the remainder of 2020 and into the early months of 2021.
People were hungry for the big picture and wanted to know as much as possible about the virus that had disrupted their lives.
