Unformatted text preview: mented and much debated in the popular press and in academic circles
as an industry disrupter, while also blamed for ending TV’s “Golden Age.”
For academic researchers, Netflix exists at the nexus of multiple fields:
internet research, information studies, media studies, and television and
has an impact on the creation of culture and how individuals relate to
the media they consume. Netflix at the Nexus examines Netflix’s broad
impact on technology and television from multiple perspectives, including the interface, the content, and user experiences. Chapters by leading
international scholars in television and internet studies provide a transnational perspective on Netflix’s changing role in the media landscape.
As a whole, this collection provides a comprehensive consideration of
the impact of streaming television. NETFLIX AT THE NEXUS Netflix’s meteoric rise as an online content provider has been well docu- Content, Practice, and Production in
the Age of Streaming Television Theo Plothe is Assistant Professor of Journalism and Mass
Communication at Savannah State University. He received a PhD in comin G|A|M|E and Kinephanos Journal.
Amber M. Buck is Assistant Professor of English at the University
of Alabama. She received a PhD in English and writing studies from
the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, and her work has been
published in Research in the Teaching of English and Computers and
Composition. Edited by Plothe & Buck munication from American University, and his work has been published PETER LANG Cover design by Ming Lee Edited by Theo Plothe & Amber M. Buck Netflix at the Nexus This book is part of the Peter Lang Media and Communication list.
Every volume is peer reviewed and meets
the highest quality standards for content and production. PETER LANG New York Bern Berlin
Brussels Vienna Oxford Warsaw Netflix at the Nexus
Content, Practice, and Production
in the Age of Streaming Television
Edited by Theo Plothe & Amber M. Buck PETER LANG New York Bern Berlin
Brussels Vienna Oxford Warsaw Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Buck, Amber M., editor. | Plothe, Theo, editor.
Title: Netflix at the nexus: content, practice, and production in the age
of streaming television / edited by Theo Plothe and Amber M. Buck.
Description: New York: Peter Lang, 2019.
Includes bibliographical references.
Identifiers: LCCN 2019007087 | ISBN 978-1-4331-6186-5 (hardback: alk. paper)
ISBN 978-1-4331-6187-2 (ebook pdf) | ISBN 978-1-4331-6188-9 (epub)
ISBN 978-1-4331-6189-6 (mobi)
Subjects: LCSH: Netflix (Firm) | Streaming video—Social aspects.
Streaming technology (Telecommunications)—Social aspects.
Classification: LCC HD9697.V544 N4866 2019 | DDC 384.55/54—dc23
LC record available at
DOI 10.3726/b14725 Bibliographic information published by Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek.
Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the “Deutsche
Nationalbibliografie”; detailed bibliographic data are available
on the Internet at . © 2019 Peter Lang Publishing, Inc., New York
29 Broadway, 18th floor, New York, NY 10006
All rights reserved.
Reprint or reproduction, even partially, in all forms such as microfilm,
xerography, microfiche, microcard, and offset strictly prohibited. To the memory of our iguana Dorian,
the best Netflix-watching buddy you could ever hope to have. table of contents List of Illustrations and Tables Acknowledgments ix
xi Introduction: Netflix at the Nexus1
Amber M. Buck and Theo Plothe Section I. Platform11
Chapter 1. TV IV’s New Audience: Netflix’s Business Model and
Model Spectators13
Jana Zündel
Chapter 2. Netflix, Imagined Affordances, and the Illusion
of Control29
Annette Markham, Simona Stavrova,
and Max Schlüter
Chapter 3. The Emergence of Netflix and the New Digital
Economic Geography of Hollywood 47
Luis F. Alvarez León
Chapter 4. Lovemarked Distribution and Consumers’ Behavior:
Netflix Communities Versus Piracy Users’ Conduct65
Gabriele Prosperi viii netflix at the nexus Section II. Content79
Chapter 5. Netflix and TV-as-Film: A Case Study of Stranger
Things and The OA81
Ana Cabral Martins
Chapter 6. At the Fringes of TV: Liminality and Privilege in
Netflix’s Original Scripted Dramedy Series97
Jessica Ford
Chapter 7. Programming Gendered Content: Industry,
Post-feminism, and Netflix’s Serialized Exposition
of Jessica Jones113
Jason A. Smith, Briana L. Pocratsky, Marissa Kiss,
and Christian Rafael Suero
Chapter 8. Netflix: Culturally Transformative and Equally Accessible129
Kimberly Fain
Chapter 9. From ViKi to Netflix: Crossing Borders and
Meshing Cultures147
Oranit Klein Shagrir
Section III. Viewer Practices161
Chapter 10. Transforming Media Production in an Era of
“Binge-Watching”: Netflix’s Cinematic Long-Form
Serial Programming and Reception163
Sheri Chinen Biesen
Chapter 11. Binge-Watching the Algorithmic Catalog: Making
Sense of Netflix in the Aftermath of the Italian Launch179
Fabio Giglietto, Chiara Checcaglini, Giada Marino,
and Lella Mazzoli
Chapter 12. The Netflix Experience: A User-focused Approach to
the Netflix Recommendation Algorithm197
Daniela Varela Martínez and Anne Kaun
Chapter 13. Do Spoilers Matter?: Asynchronous Viewing Habits on
Netflix and Twitter213
Theo Plothe and Amber M. Buck
Chapter 14. “Are You Still Watching?”: Audiovisual Consumption
on Digital Platforms and Practices Related to the
Routines of Netflix Users223
Vanessa Amália D. Valiati Contributors239 illustrations and tables Illustration
Figure 2.1. Three forms of control contributing to the expected
affordances of Netflix. 43 Tables
Table 11.1. Table 11.2. Table 11.3. Table 12.1. Table 13.1. Table 13.2. Codebook of tweets.
Distribution of tweets in the dataset by codes.
Codeset for the analysis of the interviews.
Overview of the participants.
Language of #HouseofCards tweets.
Word frequency count. 185
186
188
203
217
218 acknowledgments An edited collection is the product of many, and we would first like to thank
our authors for their tireless work writing and researching this scholarship and
for entrusting us with their scholarship to include in this collection. We’re
honored for the opportunity to work with all of you and to publish your stellar
work.
We would also like to thank the entire team at Peter Lang, and especially
Kathryn Harrison and Erika Hendrix for the faith in this collection and their
assistance through the publication processes.
Thanks also goes to Dr. Kathryn Montgomery at American University
for her mentorship and professional guidance. It took many days of 500 words
each to get this book published, and she set us on the right path.
Finally, we would like to recognize the Netflix binges that brought you this
book. Among the series that inspired us: The West Wing, House of Cards, Jessica
Jones, The British Baking Show, Frasier, Voltron: Legendary Defender, Archer,
Samurai Champloo, and the 72 Most Dangerous Animals of South America. introduction
Netflix at the Nexus
Amber M. Buck and Theo Plothe When Netflix launched its DVD rental by mail business on April 14, 1998,
there were few indications that the company would win an Emmy in 2013 for
Television Directing, for David Fincher’s “Episode 1” of House of Cards. At
the time, the home entertainment media landscape was dominated by video
rental brick and mortar stores like Blockbuster and cable television. Netflix’s move first to a monthly subscription model and second to online video
streaming capitalized on technological changes and infrastructure upgrades
like broadband to innovate the film, television, and technology industries in
ways that are still evolving. Netflix has been praised as the future of television
(Auletta, 2014) and as “the most feared force in Hollywood” (Villarreal &
James, 2016), while also decried as the end of “TV’s Golden Age” and blamed
for ushering in an era where “TV shows may be briefer, lower-budget and filled
with the kind of product-placement ads that audiences hate and advertisers
pay for” (Thielman, 2016).
Netflix has become the industry-leading video streaming platform in a
way that makes its name synonymous with the concept. It has inspired new
terms for cultural practices, from “binge-watching” and “cord cutting,” to even
“Netflix and chill.” These terms reflect the ways that Netflix has changed
television viewers’ practices and connections with the media they consume. 2 netflix at the nexus While DVD box sets first made this practice a possibility, Netflix has enabled
more viewers to watch more television programs on a single loop. Having
access to a vast archive of syndicated and original content available on a multitude of devices—from smart TVs and game consoles to desktop computers,
tablets, and mobile phones—has allowed consumers to more fully sever their
ties to a broadcast TV model, including appointment television, and cable
providers themselves.
Through its original content, Netflix is also innovating the form of television itself. Rather than episodic storytelling told week-by-week, Netflix’s
distribution model allows for long-form programming, with one narrative told
across eight- or thirteen-hour episodes assumed to be watched in rather quick
succession. This structure eliminates the need for title sequences, recaps, and
other repetition devices to remind viewers of previous episodes and events.
No longer tied to advertisers or to a television broadcasting schedule, narratives can also break from the tyranny of the 21-minute or 42-minute episodes
with built-in commercial breaks. Bianchini and Jacob de Souza (2017) discussed this flexibility in their analysis of Arrested Development’s fourth season,
which was produced exclusively for Netflix and experimented with many of
these narrative structures. While Arrested Development was an early example of the possibilities in moving beyond broadcast and cable television, the
implications of this change are only just beginning to be felt. Researching Netflix
For scholars, Netflix also sits at the nexus of multiple areas of work: television studies, internet research, and information studies. Academic research
on Netflix has focused primarily on algorithmic culture and Netflix’s recommendation engine (Gomez-Uribe & Hunt, 2016; Hallinan & Striphas, 2016),
as well as binge watching practices (Jenner, 2016; Pittman & Sheehan, 2015).
Other work has emphasized the connections between Netflix and net neutrality policy (Davies, 2016), as well as the company’s place in the home entertainment industry (McDonald, 2016). Continuing to explore the impact of
Netflix and its implications for culture, economics, and technology is important to develop frameworks through which to better understand its importance
on technology and culture.
A more recent development is Netflix expansion into international markets. In early 2016, Netflix expanded to 130 new countries at once, making
it a global media company, yet one with localized content for each market introduction 3 (Barrett, 2017). The company aggressively blocks VPN traffic in order to
ensure that Netflix users only see content licensed for that particular region
(Greenberg, 2016). The streaming service, then, provides a different experience for individuals in different countries. When the fifth season of House
of Cards premiered worldwide on May 31, 2017, Middle Eastern subscribers
found the new season missing from their streaming devices. Due to negotiations regarding licensing agreements, Season 5 was not available in the Middle East until July 2 (Newbould, 2017). Netflix is currently available in 190
different countries across the globe, and the service occupies a different place
among each country’s media landscape that also deserves further investigation. Netflix as a Liminal Space
Netflix, as a platform, a company, and a distribution model exists in a liminal space, at the nexus of television and film, internet archive and home
entertainment service, and content distributor and movie studio. Netflix is
ultimately a product of convergence, a case study in the ways that digital
media not only combine multiple analog media into one digital form, but
also combine multiple industries into one company. Henry Jenkins (2006)
described two types of media convergence: (1) technological, where different forms of content are presented through one medium and device; and (2)
cultural, where fans follow content and stories across platforms and participate more directly in creating those narratives (pp. 10–12). Netflix certainly
reflects the results of technological convergence, where previous analog film
and broadcast television content are combined digital video and accessed in
digital streaming form through a variety of devices.
Through their concept of “remediation,” Jay David Bolter and Richard
Grusin (1999) described the way that new technologies are first understood
and conceptualized through older technologies; for example, automobiles as
horseless carriages and word processors as glorified typewriters. While new
technologies first approximate and innovate features of older technologies,
they soon begin to move beyond the frameworks of those older technologies, innovate new features, and become less connected to the older media
form. Netflix in the current moment is still recognizable as all of these entities mentioned above: film studio, television producer, home entertainment
distributor, internet archive, and provider of web video, films, and television
programs. Yet through both the company’s innovations and the continued
blurring of content, these different categories may soon cease to have any 4 netflix at the nexus meaning. The digital medium and this process of remediation have exploded
constraints for both form and content; stories on Netflix may last 12 minutes
or eight hours, and some content produced by Netflix might be nominated
for Emmys or for Academy Awards. Netflix may be accelerating a situation in
which former genres, categories, and constraints may no longer be appropriate. This collection examines this liminal quality of Netflix as a platform and
entertainment company and broadens the current discussion to consider Netflix’s continued impact on technology, television, film, and the internet. The
chapters we have collected here present critical and empirical studies from
international scholars with diverse perspectives. We’ve divided the book into
three sections: investigations of the Netflix platform, its content, and finally,
studies of Netflix user practices and experiences. Platform
Contributions in the first section considers Netflix as a technology and a
platform. José Van Dijck and Thomas Poell define platforms as “online sites
that facilitate and organize data streams, economic interactions, and social
exchanges between users” (p. 2). These chapters consider how Netflix acts
as a platform and how its distribution model and interface design position its
users.
Jana Zündel examines the Netflix audience to consider how the site attracts
and appeals to viewers. Its content, both syndicated and original and from
both film and television, is from a wide array of sources and perspectives and
appeals to a wide range of tastes that gives the site a heterogeneous audience.
While Netflix operates on a subscription model, it avoids the narrowcasting
concerns of niche, premium cable channels. Zündel argues that through the
diversity of Netflix catalog and original content, Netflix considers its audience
“a mass of different individuals” instead of one group with distinct tastes.
Annette Markham, Simona Stavrova, and Max Schlüter use different
conceptual definitions of control to examine how Netflix allows and constrains users’ control through interface elements. These authors argue for an
idea of control as a “sensemaking device” to analyze interactions in heavilymediated environments.
Luis F. Alvarez León takes a critical geography perspective in considering
the ways that Netflix rearticulates economic geographies of the entertainment
and technology industries. León argues that Netflix has globalized the American film and television industry in a new way, as well as exposed American introduction 5 audiences to more international content. These new technological systems
reshape the spatial configuration of markets and create new distribution systems, geographically speaking.
In Chapter Four, Gabriele Prosperi turns to the Italian market to explore
the ways that Netflix disrupted an entire sector of file-sharing platforms that
operated in a gray area between piracy and legitimate video streaming and
file sharing services. Prosperi notes that indexing sites for illegal download
services use visual design and branding as a “lovemark” (Jenkins, 2006) in
order to look legitimate and appealing. Netflix has used the same tactics for
branding and identification, showing how viewers can conceive of a distribution system as a brand with a certain ethos. Prosperi compares the aspects of
both distribution systems and their reliance on archives and indexicality to
explain the prominence of both formal and informal distribution systems in
the Italian context. Content
In the second section, we turn to an examination Netflix content, both in
the types of stories told in Netflix original programs, as well as the nature of
that content’s serialized narrative. These scholars consider the types of stories
that Netflix privileges, as well as how its streaming model changes serialized
programming.
Ana Cabral Martins examines Stranger Things and The OA, both Netflix originals, to explore the impact of longform storytelling to the television
landscape. Serialized television blends boundaries with film, as these stories
are often called “long movies.” Martins also notes that Netflix itself organizes
content in terms of seasons rather than episodes. As an entire season is usually
released at one time, and the result is an 8-hour or 13-hour long narrative.
Martins explores the way that both Stranger Things and The OA bridges the
gap between film and television in terms of narrative content and length.
Jessica Ford examines representation in Netflix original content to consider the way this programming centralizes liminal stories from marginalized
groups, including women, people of color, and differently-able bodied people.
Netflix’s position on the fringe of the U.S. television industry, Ford argues,
allows it to function outside of more restrictive distribution systems with fewer
requirements for ratings. In her essay, Ford examines how this concept of liminality is enacted in several popular Netflix television series: Orange Is the New
Black, Master of None, Lady Dynamite, Dear White People, and GLOW. Ford 6 netflix at the nexus labels these programs dramedies and argues that they exist in a liminal space
themselves, containing aspects of both comedy and drama, yet unable to be
categorized as either/or.
Jason A. Smith, Briana L. Pocratsky, Marissa Kiss, and Christian Suero
focus their analysis on one particular Netflix program, Jessica Jones (2015),
and explore the gender representation in the portrayal of its titular character.
Jones may be considered a post-feminist hero in the first season of her show,
and her portrayal differs from and expands on other strong female characters
in television. Her inclusion in the Marvel miniseries The Defenders (2017),
also produced by Netflix, diminishes her role to that of a minor character with
less agency in the narrative. The authors argue that the case of Jessica Jones
points to the complex balancing act that Netflix engages in with their original
programming: providing “culturally-relevant” and “boundary-crossing” television, while maintaining commercial viability.
Kimberly Fain examines Netflix’s role in producing culturally relevant
and liminal narratives with a focus specifically on representations of African
Americans. Fain pla...
View
Full Document
