Dissertation
Imagining the world: personalization algorithms and global media flows on Netflix
University of Iowa
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), University of Iowa
Summer 2021
DOI: 10.17077/etd.005953
Abstract
New ways of film and television distribution are afforded by streaming video technologies. While linear television channels were only able to broadcast 24 hours of film and television content daily, non-linear streaming services provide large libraries of content that people can watch when and where they want. The size of these libraries affords streaming services the ability to have unseen levels of representation within their libraries of content. Global media studies has long been interested in the movement of film and television products around the world. This dissertation focuses on Netflix to question how the international flow of film and television products shifts under new technological and industrial logics arising from the streaming era. Although streaming services’ libraries of content afford people access to more media from around the world than linear television, the primary way people understand these libraries is through the personalization algorithms that calculate what content to show to specific users. By blending traditional qualitative media industries approaches to research, such as interviews with industry workers, with computational methods, like algorithm audits, I argue that the personalization algorithms that drive global media flows in film and television streaming services are encoded with biased logics that affect what representations people see of other cultures from around the world. In doing so, I question how Netflix presents the world to users and cultivates their global imaginaries.I begin my analysis by examining how Netflix claims to represent the world to people in its first global branding campaign. Netflix rhetorically promotes itself as offering users a banal cosmopolitan experience, where individuals become more aware of and compassionate for people and cultures from around world by consuming media through Netflix. I argue that Netflix’s localization strategies undercut their cosmopolitan rhetorical message though, instead promoting a multicultural service that views all non-American/Western cultures as exchangeable.
The next three chapters then examine how Netflix’s rhetoric about its “cosmopolitan” global media distribution clashes with the user experience Netflix provides. In Chapter three, I scrutinize Netflix’s “global” status, showcasing how Netflix remains largely unavailable around the world and how its library of original content is internationally diverse but concentrated with Western film and television products. I conclude the chapter by arguing that streaming services’ libraries matter less than the algorithmic distribution of content because users are only able to consume content that they are aware is within the library. Chapter four then examines how Netflix distributes content from its libraries via algorithms. I provide an in-depth analysis of how Netflix constructs data about its products and users and argue this data allows Netflix’s algorithms to calculate similarities between products and users that recreate distributions to existing national taste cultures. I conclude the chapter by conducting an algorithm audit in which I create new user accounts to show how Netflix assumes national differences in new users, limiting users’ ability to find non-American/Western international content by hiding it within a difficult-to-know library of content. Chapter five then examines what products are most distributed and consumed around the world through Netflix. By examining the countr(ies) of origin for media products featured in Netflix’s top 10 lists across roughly 80 countries over a 6-month period, I show that Netflix primarily serves users a blend of American and local content, where, like Netflix’s global branding campaign, the local remains interchangeable while the global is synonymous with international content from America and the West.
Although Netflix frames itself as revolutionizing the ways media flows around the world, this dissertation ultimately suggests that the service offers similar representations of the world to users as film and television’s past distribution patterns. Users mostly are able to see and consume local and Western content. Netflix affords the potential to actually give users a cosmopolitan media experience, but its algorithms obscure this experience for most users.
Details
- Title: Subtitle
- Imagining the world: personalization algorithms and global media flows on Netflix
- Creators
- Ryan Stoldt
- Contributors
- Brian Ekdale (Advisor)Tim Havens (Advisor)Kembrew McLeod (Committee Member)Melissa Tully (Committee Member)Travis Vogan (Committee Member)
- Resource Type
- Dissertation
- Degree Awarded
- Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), University of Iowa
- Degree in
- Mass Communication
- Date degree season
- Summer 2021
- DOI
- 10.17077/etd.005953
- Publisher
- University of Iowa
- Number of pages
- xiii, 204 pages
- Copyright
- Copyright 2021 Ryan Stoldt
- Language
- English
- Description illustrations
- color illustrations
- Description bibliographic
- Includes bibliographical references (pages 176-204).
- Public Abstract (ETD)
When people log onto Netflix or other streaming video services, they are presented with a list of films and television series that they can choose to watch at their convenience. This dissertation questions which people and cultures are represented to users of Netflix around the world. Mass communication research has long been concerned about nations overpowering other nations’ cultures through the international exchange of media. Because media are cultural artifacts, researchers have been long concerned that the consumption of imported media can change the culture that consumes the imported programming. American media have historically dominated the movement of media products between nations.
Netflix suggests that it functions differently than previous film and television distributors though. They claim they uniquely give people a passport to see people and cultures from around the world. The service promotes itself as giving people a global experience that has historically been unavailable to consumers.
However, personalization algorithms, or the mathematical formulas that digital media businesses use to calculate what content individuals should see online, shape what media people see in Netflix and which people and cultures they have access to through the service. I examine the ways in which Netflix does and does not offer a global service to consumers by examining its advertising, its global reach, the content within its library, and how its algorithms distribute content globally.
- Academic Unit
- School of Journalism and Mass Communication
- Record Identifier
- 9984124359102771
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