601 / 658
599
Saturday, November 12
1 1 : 0 0 – 1 2 : 3 0
TVS05
Cultures of Netflix
I. Wagman
1
1
Carleton University, School of Journalism and Communication, Ottawa, Canada
This panel turns its attention to a consideration of Netflix, arguably the most influential video streaming service in the world today. The recent announce‑
ment that the video streaming service will be available in 130 countries testifies to its considerable power and reach. Scholars have to date devoted critical
attention to understanding how the company’s emergence, along with the arrival of other video streaming platforms, has challenged established produc‑
tion and consumption models in film and television (Tryon 2013). Others note how Netflix represents the increasing dominance of “algorithmic culture”
(Hallinan and Striphas 2016) as a determining factor in how user's access and experience audiovisual texts. Finally, there are those scholars who note
the changing forms of media consumption habits, such as “binge watching”, that streaming services promote (Jenner 2014; Matrix 2014). In this panel
we build upon that literature to grapple with some of the cultural effects of Netflix on a number of different issues. These range from aesthetic matters (is
there such a thing as a“Netflix-type”program?), policy matters (will governments or regulatory agencies need to create rules to govern how the company
will operate in different places?), and infrastructural concerns (such as geo-blocking, copyright, and net neutrality). It is the goal of this panel to provide
insights into how different cultural contexts“domesticate’what is widely known as a“disruptive”technology. Recognizing the ways that Netflix has brought
the temporal, spatial, and regulatory aspects of film and television into relief, this panel turns its attention to a variety of case studies to see how the ways
different people access, govern, and make use of the streaming platform. IraWagman explores the battles between Netflix and Canada's broadcasting reg‑
ulator as symptomatic of what Tarleton Gillespie calls "the politics of 'platforms'" that place new media companies at odds with rules and regulations that
once applied to what we now call "legacy media". Dom Holdaway shows how Netflix plays a role in circulating Italian films in different ways than traditional
media forms. Luca Barra explores the role of "hype" in bringing Netflix to Italian audiences. Finally Jessica Izquierdo Castillo explores how Netflix and other
streaming platforms in Spain raise questions about the concept of net neutrality. It will be clear from the papers presented in this panel that understanding
the implications of Netflix for local, national, and regional media cultures will require insights from a variety of methodological perspectives, from produc‑
tion studies to policy analysis and studies of cultural adaptation.
PN 284
Netflix and the Cultural Politics of Platforms in Canada
I. Wagman
1
1
Carleton University, School of Journalism and Communication, Ottawa, Canada
Netflix has been enormously successful in Canada. The company recently claimed that 4.6 million people subscribe to its Canadian service. A study by a local
software company estimated that somewhere between 30–40% of downstream traffic in peak hours belongs to Netflix. In addition, a large number (one
report claims up to 35%) of Netflix subscribers access the U.S. version of the site through VPNs, watching shows like Louie or films like American Psycho that
are unavailable on the Canadian service for rights reasons. The company’s success has come at the direct expense of Canada’s major broadcasters and its
cable and service providers (many of whom are owned by the same company). Many Canadians are cancelling their cable subscriptions in favour of the con‑
siderably cheaper streaming alternatives, a phenomenon known as“cord cutting”. In this paper I explore the ways that Netflix engages with Canada’s highly
regulated media environment. The country’s broadcasters are subject to heavy regulations that force them to broadcast a percentage of Canadian content
television programming and to contribute a percentage of their revenues to funds that support the production of Canadian programming. Netflix has
been immune to those regulations because they have successfully claimed that they are not“broadcasters”and thus not subject to the same rules as other
domestic services. Some broadcasters have reacted angrily, suggesting that the government needs to get tougher on Netflix while at the same time rolling
out competing services in search of gaining market advantage in the Canadian streaming market. Some have even suggested a“Netflix tax”be imposed on
Internet service providers. But what has been striking is the company’s relative absence from the policy discussion. In one celebrated example, the company
appearance before Canada’s broadcasting regulator as part of a review of the country’s television services was deleted from the public record because
the company refused to provide subscriber data on the grounds that the regulator did not have the jurisdiction to ask for them. This example from Canada
reveals whatTarleton Gillespie (2010) has called the politics of platforms, about the ways that new technology companies offer slippery and vague accounts
of how to they characterize their services so that they are able to work to their regulatory advantage in different settings. In this paper I point to the conflict‑
ing place of streaming services in national contexts by showing that such services appear to be immune to the kind of nationalist rhetoric that buttressed
the development of cultural and national media policies in Canada in the past. Indeed, I will show that the Canadian experience with Netflix shows how new
media services position themselves along logics which equate policy interventions as matters of consumer sovereignty, rather than national independence.
It is hoped that a focus on Netflix in the Canadian context can be useful for studying the relationship between digital media companies and the nation-state.
PN 285
On Demand Isn’t Built in a Day: Hype, Promotion, and the Difficult Challenges of Netflix’s Arrival in Italy
L. Barra
1
1
Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore -- Centro di Ricerca sulla Televisione e gli Audiovisivi, Dipartimento di Scienze della Comunicazione e dello Spettacolo, Milan, Italy
In the days surrounding Netflix’s landing in the Italian market, a lot of different media outlets (newspapers, magazines, websites, radio, television itself)
presented the new platform as a revolution, a game-changer, a threat for established broadcasters, and so on. After a long wait, with an hype increased and
multiplied by the news coming from the US, the arrival in other European markets and the strengths of the first branded productions (as House of Cards and
Orange is the New Black), since October 22, 2015, also the Italian TV audience has been able to access to Netflix’s rich library and original series. On the one
hand, Netflix collected the results of its effort to establish and increase a long-term promotional discourse in Italy: first with the local repercussions of its
international publicity; later with an early announcement, in Spring 2015, of the birth of an Italian Netflix – the creation of social media official profiles was