Self-determined or controlled, seeking pleasure, or meaning? Identifying what makes viewers enjoy watching television on streaming services

Marika Lüders

doi:10.1016/j.poetic.2021.101639

Abstract

Television streaming services afford experiences that align with and go beyond what linear television affords. These experiential differences relate to self-scheduling opportunities and how on-demand services are organized as libraries of content. The aim of this article is to conceptualize and investigate how conditions related to streaming and agency are associated with the enjoyment of watching on-demand television. The article first conceptualizes and develops measures that reflect how audiences experience watching on-demand television, and secondly validates and tests how these measures predict enjoyment. Results suggest that enjoyment is primarily explained by social significance, immersive viewing, lower levels of deliberate viewing, and positive perceptions of programmed paths. The article argues for the need for analytical approaches where viewers are neither treated as gullible targets of media power nor all-empowered subjects.

Highlights

Television streaming services afford viewing experiences that depart from linear television experiences
This article aims to locate a constructive theoretical space between these opposing positions and to empirically investigate how conditions related to streaming and agency are associated with the enjoyment accrued from watching television on streaming services
Hedonic and eudaimonic motivation were entered as predictive constructs

Summary

Introduction

Television streaming services afford viewing experiences that depart from linear television experiences. Scholars have questioned the common framing of on-demand viewers as in control, arguing instead that viewer agency is circumscribed: the viewing experience remains structured, but by other types of steering mechanisms compared to linear programming (Cox, 2018; Johnson, 2019; Van Esler, 2021). This unsettled conception of the status of the viewer represents a vibrant field of research. This article aims to locate a constructive theoretical space between these opposing positions and to empirically investigate how conditions related to streaming and agency are associated with the enjoyment accrued from watching television on streaming services

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