Abstract
As the Streaming Wars continue to heat up, recommendation systems like the Netflix Recommender System (NRS) will become key competitive features for every major over-the-top video streamer. As a result, film and television production and consumption will increasingly be in the hands of semi-autonomous algorithmic technologies. But how do recommendation systems like the NRS work? What purposes do they serve? And what sorts of impacts are they having on film and television culture? To respond to these questions, this article will (1) examine how algorithms are impacting processes of taste-making and (2) re-evaluate some of the critical theoretical perspectives that have come to dominate the discourse surrounding algorithmic cultures. To do so, I join Bucher ((2016) Neither black nor box: Ways of knowing algorithms. In: S Kubitscko and A Kaun (eds) Innovative Methods in Media and Communication Research. Cham: Springer International Publishing, pp. 81–98; (2018) If…then: Algorithmic Power and Politics. London: Oxford University Press) in adopting a relational materialist perspective of algorithms and proceed to reverse engineer the NRS; an experiment that exposes the system’s circular and economic logics while highlighting the complex and networked nature of taste-making in the film and television industry.
Highlights
The film and television industry has recently been transformed by a new wave of over-the-top (OTT) video streaming services, all of which rely heavily on the use of algorithms
The COVID-19 pandemic has led to the proliferation of ‘virtual cinemas’ and online film festivals (Erbland, 2020), and it has intensified the competitive dynamics of the Streaming Wars, allowing services like Netflix and Disneyþ to amass record-breaking subscriber numbers (Spangler, 2020)
I contribute to this dialogue by examining the elements of the Netflix Recommender System (NRS) that have most typically been called into question, in particular, its impact on taste-making
Summary
The film and television industry has recently been transformed by a new wave of over-the-top (OTT) video streaming services, all of which rely heavily on the use of algorithms. The transformative shift taking place in the film and television industry today presents a prime opportunity to evaluate the evolving operations of algorithms and their entanglements with culture and a moment to critically assess the existing scholarship on algorithmic cultures and some of its more dominant perspectives Among these perspectives, there is a recurring tendency to think of algorithms as ‘black boxed’ technical devices that, due to their ability to sort, rank and distribute cultural items, possess the power to shape cultural tastes, practices and realities while remaining fundamentally exogenous from culture itself (Beer, 2013; Pasqual, 2015). I suggest that systems like the NRS may have made the relational, reflexive and performative way taste operates in the world more tangible and comprehensible via the language, logics and processes of computation
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