In twelve short months, the world’s four most influential video explainers (newsfluencers) have racked up billions of views across all platforms. An impressive figure, and a stat to give pause for thought to any number of news publishers. The big numbers, however, while eye-catching, do nothing to help us understand just how that attention map is being built. So Media Scan took the time to look beyond the numbers with a TOP 5,300 of the most viewed videos, to examine what this content really reveals, and what the Reuters Institute report does not tell us.
Media Scan relies on social data collected via Tubular Labs, the global benchmark for video measurement. This Media Scan was conducted on 17 November 2025.
The message that comes loud and clear from Mapping News Creators and Influencers in Social and Video Networks (Reuters Institute) is that newsfluencers are now in the front rank of information circulation. They inform, explain and capture the attention of a generation that no longer has the reflex of turning to traditional media.
With the help of Tubular Labs tools, we extracted and analysed the top 5,323 of their videos published between November 2024 and November 2025 across four platforms (TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube). And when we look closely at how these creators produce, and really produce, their content, we see that we risk ignoring how they work and gain impact not least because of the way traditional analysis categorises them.
The Reuters report classifies HugoDécrypte, Dylan Page, V Spehar and Kovy in the “Explanation” category. This is accurate, on one level, but terribly misleading because they go way beyond the ‘explainer’ content of traditional media. All four creators don’t just explain: they react, summarise, decompress, contextualise, edit, remix and develop formats in ways no other media outlet permits itself.
There has been much mention of the tone and content chosen by newsfluencers, but on closer inspection it’s also clear that their defining strength goes beyond tone or topic and part of the very structure of their offerings.
Billions of views, but four distinct models
These 5,323 videos represent a colossal amount of attention to explore:
– several billion views across all platforms,
– hundreds of millions of interactions,
– millions of hours watched.
At first glance these four ‘explainers’ have almost nothing in common.
- One lives in the moment.
- Another alternates between very short and very long formats.
- A third transforms political news into a continuous narrative.
- The last builds a long-term relationship with videos lasting 10 to 15 minutes.
In reality, the single category of “explainer” is too narrow to encompass four such varied models of attention.
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The key finding: the defining feature of each ‘explainer’ is the way they use time.
Typical media analysis focuses on editorial stance, and tone, but to get to the heart of the newsfluencer explainers we focused on duration. Because duration is not a haphazard, or aesthetic choice: it is a strategic decision.
Analysis of the 5,323 videos reveals that timing is the DNA of these newsfluencers:
- it reveals their intentions,
- it structures their formats,
- it dictates their relationship with the audience.
That factor also reveals not one single strategy for success, but four.
Four runners leading the field, four approaches to runtimes, four editorial strategies.
That close inspection of runtime and format is the key to the way these newsfluencers manage to seize the audience’s attention from first glance, to be present across a number of platforms and formats without repetition, to explain news without generating anxiety, and, crucially, how in doing so to build long-term relationships with their public.
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The challenge for newsrooms: video is no longer a format, it’s an ecosystem
In newsrooms, we still talk about formats: newsrooms across continents ring to the refrain “we’re going to do a 30-45 seconds, next we’ll do a TikTok version, oh and don’t forget the long format for YouTube.”
However, the reality observed in these 5,323 videos exposes the limitations of that thinking: the top newsfluencer explainers do not have formats: they have a time signature.
This poses three major challenges:
◾Challenge 1. Breaking free from the “dictatorship of formats”
Audiences don’t react to a given format. They react best when content synchs with its time frame.
Explainers have been faster to understand this.
◾Challenge 2. Choosing a dominant platform (and sticking to it)
Each explainer has a key platform: TikTok, Instagram, YouTube… but never all of them at the same time.
Editorial teams must stop trying to perform everywhere, reproducing and repeating in the process.
Video is an investment model, and that means key decisions.
◾Challenge 3. Move from production to orchestration
Today, the media lacks:
- a long-term strategy,
- a runtime strategy,
- a strategy for long-term engagement (something newsfluencers are very good at), etc.
Newsfluencers orchestrate, while the media focus on producing.
The time signature is not a format; it’s both style and strategy.
What the data shows is that performance depends not only on individual talent, but on three specific mechanisms:
- controlled duration, adapted to the platform and subject;
- a measurable algorithmic dynamic, from V1 to V30;
- a narrative signature, the combination of duration, rhythm and structure.
And that’s precisely where it all begins.
Behind these four explainers are reproducible, transferable, intelligent models that can help any media outlet rethink its video strategy.
What Media Scan retains: the video signature, not the format
Ultimately, after analysing several thousand videos, one lesson stands out: it’s not the video that performs. It’s the signature.
Each newfluerncer has their own signature, but traditional media overlooks that as it focuses too much on the formats to be produced.
Please contact us for further information. : contact@upgrademedia.fr
Tubular Labs
Tubular Labs is the leading platform for analysing video content on social media. Thanks to a collection and classification engine that covers millions of videos per day on TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, Facebook and other channels, Tubular makes it possible to measure what the media publishes and, above all, how the public reacts.
La Méthodologie de Media Scan
This Media Scan analysis, a decoding format from Upgrade Media, is based on 5,323 videos published between November 2024 and November 2025 by four explainers identified by the Reuters Institute: HugoDécrypte, Dylan Page, V Spehar and Kovy, on TikTok, Instagram, YouTube and Facebook.
The data was collected via Tubular Labs, then consolidated on durations, V1–V30 trajectories, engagement (ER7, ER30) and title structures.The aim is not to judge the quality of the content, but to understand how attention is seized, held, and built on, with a consideration of the various factors that go into that media mix.
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