Social Media Video Captions

An umbrella term for the textual or symbolic elements — platform-generated captions, creator-edited captions, user-generated captions, and non-speech information such as sound effects, music cues, or onomatopoeia — that are temporally aligned with video content on social media platforms like YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram to support comprehension, meaning-making, or interpretive access. SMVC differ from traditional broadcast or streaming captions in that they are embedded within creator-facing editing tools, algorithmic feeds, moderation pipelines, and participatory usage norms — making their design fundamentally socio-technical rather than purely technical.