Streaming Video
How are streaming video services and social media platforms transforming industry practices? In what ways are these digital platforms reshaping the dynamic between content, creators, and audiences? What regulatory responses have been initiated and what are the implications of these?
As part of the digital transition, experiences of watching TV (e.g. TV series, films and new cultural forms) nowadays include services like Netflix, Disney+, and Amazon Prime Video and also, in the domain of user-generated content, social media platforms such as YouTube, Instagram and TikTok. While streaming video services and social media platforms have distinct characteristics, they share many commonalities as computational architectures that operate in global markets. Analyzing these new forms of internet distributed video effectively requires combining insights from multiple disciplines.
Transforming industry practices
This Special Interest Group focuses on how streaming video services and social media platforms are transforming industry practices of production, distribution and consumption. It is interested in the evolving dynamics between content creators and their audience, as well as the business models supporting them. It explores the emergence of new formats, storytelling techniques and aesthetics.
Regulatory responses
Additionally, the SIG actively engages with the regulatory responses designed to address these transformations. These include questions related to labor practices, stipulations for local content and diversity, issues concerning competition and market dominance, and strategies for content regulation.
Key topics
We invite academics across disciplines and fields such as film studies, television studies, digital media studies, law, and computer science, to participate in the SIG initiatives. Through roundtable discussions, seminars and collaborative research initiatives, this SIG serves as a forum for exploration and understanding of this evolving landscape. Key topics for exploration include:
- AI and cultural production
- Data and algorithmic labor
- Interface placement, recommendation systems and metrics
- Styles, narratives and aesthetics
- Libraries and programming strategies
- Shifts in audience-viewing practices
- Regulation and content moderation