Binge-watching Research Articles

Just one more: How journalists frame binge watching

“Binge watching” is a term associated with multiple practices of serial narrative consumption afforded by digital infrastructures. This paper tracks the normalization of the term “binge watching” in the press. I look at the archives of the New York Times, Atlantic, Wall Street Journal, Daily News, New York Post, Slate, and the criticism of several prominent journalists from the 1980s to 2016 to trace the phrase and its evolving social relevance. I find that for journalists, the episode, not the hour is the fundamental unit of the “binge watch”. Journalists participated in the construction of “binge watching” as an all-consuming experience that takes place at the expense of daily life. At the same time, they contradicted this construction by using the term to represent practices of serial media consumption that fit seamlessly within existing patterns of work and leisure.

TRANSFORMATION OF LEISURE TIME IN NEW MEDIA: BINGE WATCH

Communication has been in existence since the beginning of human history. It is impossible to think of communication without humans, and humans without communication. Throughout time, individuals have developed their communication skills. By obligation to these developments, the environment where the message is tranferred also changes. Media is updated everyday with technical novelties. Bolter’s statement “each improvement is a mediation” models the transformation in media and new media. Content, relationships and interaction in new media are mediations, while what concerns systems and technology is considered as remediation. The increase in content and interaction in the media, and the update of relationships creates mediation. The transformation in the technological substructure of the media is expressed as remediation. The most obvious example to give is television. Television has had a linear communication process as a conventional media tool. However, television has undergone the processes of remediation and mediation, where it has now incorporated an interactive structure. With characteristics such as internet, 3 dimensions, digitalization, high resolution, television can now be characterized as ‘smart’. Technology, which is defined as socialized information, has turned television into an interactive system. Due to this novelty, television watching habits are changing. In this context, new terminology is also emerging. This study examines binge watching, as a new television watching habit as a result of television’s changing characteristics. This study further examines the concept of binge watching according to the uses and gratification theory, where New Media practices have transformed television show watching patterns as a free time activity. In the study, the concept is discussed through a literature review and evaluated through a survey prepared to understand individual television show watching habits.

Binge Watching and Advertising

How users consume media has shifted dramatically as viewers migrate from traditional broadcast channels toward online channels. Rather than following the schedule dictated by television networks and consuming one episode of a series each week, many viewers now engage in binge watching, which involves consuming several episodes of the same series in a condensed period of time. In this research, the authors decompose users’ viewing behavior into (1) whether the user continues the viewing session after each episode viewed, (2) whether the next episode viewed is from the same or a different series, and (3) the time elapsed between sessions. Applying this modeling framework to data provided by Hulu.com , a popular online provider of broadcast and cable television shows, the authors examine the drivers of binge watching behavior, distinguishing between user-level traits and states determined by previously viewed content. The authors simultaneously investigate users’ response to advertisements. Many online video providers support their services with advertising revenue; thus, understanding how users respond to advertisements and how advertising affects subsequent viewing is of paramount importance to both advertisers and online video providers. The results of the study reveal that advertising responsiveness differs between bingers and nonbingers and that it changes over the course of online viewing sessions. The authors discuss the implications of their results for advertisers and online video platforms.

Digital Media Platforms and the Use of TV Content: Binge Watching and Video-on-Demand in Germany

The advancing digitalization and media convergence demands TV broadcasting companies to adjust their content to various platforms and distribution channels. The internet, as convergent carrier medium, is increasingly taking on a central role for additional media. Classical linear TV is still important, but for some audiences it has been developing from a primary medium to a secondary medium. Owing to the growing melding of classical-linear TV contents with online offerings (e.g. video-on-demand platforms or Web–TV), a great dynamic can be seen which has triggered numerous discussions about the future of TV for some time now. This article will summarize the results of two different audience studies. Film and television shows are meanwhile distributed online via Video-on-Demand platforms such as Netflix or Amazon Prime Video. The first audience study has dealt with the use of VoD-platforms in Germany investigating user rituals, user motivation to watch films and TV shows on these platforms, and the meaning of VoD in everyday life. Most of the participants in this study reported that they mainly watch TV drama series at Netflix or Amazon Prime. Therefore, the second audience study focused the online use of television drama series of individuals and couples elaborating the phenomenon of binge watching. In relating the audience practice to the new structures of the television market the article will shed light on the future of television.

Cooperative Announcement-Based Caching for Video-on-Demand Streaming

Recently, video-on-demand (VoD) streaming services like Netflix and Hulu have gained a lot of popularity. This has led to a strong increase in bandwidth capacity requirements in the network. To reduce this network load, the design of appropriate caching strategies is of utmost importance. Based on the fact that, typically, a video stream is temporally segmented into smaller chunks that can be accessed and decoded independently, cache replacement strategies have been developed that take advantage of this temporal structure in the video. In this paper, two caching strategies are proposed that additionally take advantage of the phenomenon of binge watching, where users stream multiple consecutive episodes of the same series, reported by recent user behavior studies to become the everyday behavior. Taking into account this information allows us to predict future segment requests, even before the video playout has started. Two strategies are proposed, both with a different level of coordination between the caches in the network. Using a VoD request trace based on binge watching user characteristics, the presented algorithms have been thoroughly evaluated in multiple network topologies with different characteristics, showing their general applicability. It was shown that in a realistic scenario, the proposed election-based caching strategy can outperform the state-of-the-art by 20% in terms of cache hit ratio while using 4% less network bandwidth.

‘Just one more episode’: Frequency and theoretical correlates of television binge watching

Binge watching is a relatively new behavioural phenomenon that may have health implications. The aim of this study was to estimate the frequency of, and identify modifiable factors associated with, TV binge watching. A total of 86 people completed an online questionnaire assessing self-efficacy, proximal goals, outcome expectations, anticipated regret, automaticity, goal conflict and goal facilitation, and self-reported binge watching over the last week. Participants reported binge watching a mean 1.42 days/week (standard deviation = 1.42). Intention and outcome expectations accounted for variance in binge watching, and automaticity, anticipated regret and goal conflict each separately accounted for additional variance in binge watching. Binge watching is commonplace and associated with both reflective and impulsive factors.

Sprinting a media marathon: Uses and gratifications of binge-watching television through Netflix

“Binge-watching” represents a radical shift for twenty-first century media consumption. Why do people select this method of television viewing? A survey administered to 262 television binge-watchers identified factors that influence binge watching, several of which are somewhat different than factors impacting other types of television viewing. Factors salient for regular bingers are relaxation, engagement, and hedonism. For those who plan ahead to binge, program quality (aesthetics) and the communal aspect (social) also come into play. Those who binge on an entire series in one or two days value engagement, relaxation, hedonism, and aesthetics. We also discuss the theoretical implications and future development of uses and gratifications.