Binge-watching: Cultural Studies and developing critical literacy in the age of surveillance capitalism

Abstract

ABSTRACT With the rise in the twenty-first century of streaming services such as Netflix, binge-watching has become a significant new mode of media consumption. This article contends that binge-watching, with its extended duration, forms of absorption, attention and surveillance-commodification marks a challenge for teaching the kinds of critical understanding around representation that underpins Cultural Studies. We ask whether binge-watching can be understood through the existing frames of Cultural Studies, or whether the economies of attention, commodification, privatization and surveillance require a different form of critical reflection upon this contemporary practice. We investigate how binge-watching might differ from other forms of cultural consumption and how critical educative practices could interrogate binge-watching, and the streaming services that encourage this practice, as increasingly significant modes of cultural production and consumption.