This course examines the streaming platforms and their cultural impacts. Grounding the course in readings from film, media, and communication studies, we will examine the general state of writings around platforms, as well as the blind-spots of platform research. This will include attention to geopolitics (platform imperialism), attention to the new manners in which film and media industries globalize (in both production and circulation), the ways that nations or regions are born out of particular media platform configurations, and the impact of earlier formats such as broadcast television on streaming platforms. This course will introduce students to crucial texts in the expanded field of platform studies (from analyses of Netflix to theories of platform capitalism), while also extending debates from film and media studies to address lacunae in current platform analyses.
This course will focus on streaming platform research in particular, across a number of geographical and regional contexts. Adopting a case study model, this course will include, as possible case studies: YouTube, Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, AbemaTV, APTN lumi, iQiyi, Alibaba, and Twitch, as well as challenges to the case study model of streaming research.