Voice-Over as a Substitute for Visual Explanation in Short Videos

Abstract

Short-form video has become a dominant mode of audiovisual communication on contemporary digital platforms, where limited duration, rapid editing, and fragmented viewing practices increasingly undermine the explanatory capacity of visual continuity. This paper examines the growing role of voice-over narration as a substitute for visual explanation in short videos and argues that voice-over should be understood not as a stylistic or technical supplement but as a core explanatory mechanism. Drawing on audiovisual theory, narration studies, and platform media research, the analysis shows that visual explanation traditionally depends on temporal development, spatial coherence, and sustained attention, conditions that are structurally weakened in short video formats. In response, voice-over assumes primary explanatory authority by guiding interpretation, condensing processes, and stabilizing meaning across fragmented visuals, offering a level of clarity and abstraction that images alone struggle to achieve under accelerated and distracted consumption. The paper situates this shift within broader media conditions such as everyday multitasking, the perceptual stability of sound, platform norms favoring rapid comprehension, and cultural preferences for explicit guidance, and it discusses the narrative and cultural implications of this transformation, including a movement from showing to telling, reduced interpretive openness, and the normalization of guided meaning. By reframing voice-over as a substitute for visual explanation, the study challenges assumptions of visual dominance in audiovisual media and highlights a rebalancing of sound and image in platform-based communication.