Streaming diversity: Studying screen diversity in the streaming era

Abstract

The unprecedented growth of video-on-demand (VOD) streaming platforms has brought both new optimism and new complications to concerns around screen ‘diversity’. To what extent have major global and smaller regional VOD platforms invested in screen diversity, at the level of genres, languages, country-of-origin, social representation or creative labour? Just how ‘diverse’ are the catalogues of VOD services? How is this content represented to audiences and made discoverable through platform interfaces and recommendation systems? How might this vary across the major US-based services, compared with smaller and more niche platforms, or with local broadcaster VODs, or with national public service VODs? This introduction to a special collection on diversity in the streaming era surveys recent developments in screen and media studies scholarship that attempt to address these questions. In doing so, we examine how streaming platforms are addressing diversity at the levels of industry, policy, texts, technologies and audiences. At each level, we observe different definitions, operationalisations, and practices of ‘diversity’ that are informed by a range of disciplinary theorisations, policy histories and priorities, and national and regional contexts, all of which come to intersect with each other in new and challenging ways in the VOD era. In conclusion, we argue that to properly respond to the problem of ‘diversity’, research on screen diversity and on VODs must engage with these diverse dimensions of ‘diversity’.

Introduction

The unprecedented growth of video-on-demand (VOD) streaming platforms has brought both new optimism and new complications to concerns around screen diversity. The concept of ‘diversity’ is now routinely invoked in popular, industry and academic discourse about the screen industries in the streaming era. This has been particularly concentrated around the major US-based services like Netflix. However what exactly is being invoked by gestures and references to ‘diversity’ can vary substantially – mobilised to refer variously to content types, workforce, representation, languages, countries, industry policies and practices. ‘Diversity’ is, as Ahmed (2012) observes, ‘movable’. In this Introduction and in this special issue, we examine how screen diversity is moved, mobilised, theorised and attached to different texts, policies, and practices in the streaming era.

Over the last decade, there has been a surge in popular visibility and interest in issues of diversity within the screen industries – in terms of both on-screen representation and creative workforce. This has taken the form of major campaigns addressing inequality in the entertainment industry, specifically #OscarsSoWhite, as well as engagement with wider social justice movements around #MeToo, #StopAsianHate and Black Lives Matter. There are now numerous industry monitoring studies published regularly, such as the Hollywood Diversity Reports that have been produced annually since 2014; reports produced by the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media since 2008; and studies generated by the USC Annenberg Inclusion Initiative since 2006 (and many other local equivalents such those produced by the British Film Institute in the UK or the Seeing Ourselves on Screen reports produced by Screen Australia). In response, the major screen entertainment companies, including Netflix, Disney, Universal Pictures, Sony Pictures, and Amazon MGM, have given increasing attention to addressing diversity within their workplaces and operations, introducing new initiatives intended to support culturally diverse representation and content production; launching original series that have been celebrated for their culturally diverse representations; and raising the visibility of these representations for audiences via their recommendation systems (Khoo, 2023).

Despite these high-profile discourses of diversity, progress has been rather more mixed. As we are preparing this special issue, the latest USC Annenberg Inclusion Initiative report into film and television diversity in the realm of directing found that improvement has stalled or gone backward across key indicators relating to gender, race and ethnicity (Smith and Pieper, 2024: 16). This prompted the authors to label the many high-profile pledges to support greater screen diversity in recent years as ‘performative acts by the entertainment industry and not real steps towards fostering change’. However, the report also observed that in some areas the major SVODs were continuing to outperform the major legacy studios, suggesting that SVODs remain a site of optimism.

The optimism invoked around ‘diversity’ is key to much of the branding of Netflix (as discussed by Asmar et al., 2023; Jenner, 2018; Elkins, 2019; Khoo, 2023 and others in this issue). In addition to its high-profile public commitments to cultural diversity within its employment and commissioning of creative work, Netflix’s industrial discourses have consistently emphasised the geographic diversity of its content. Although Lotz et al. (2022: 517) show that 95% of Netflix’s domestic commissions come from just 17 countries, Netflix consistently frames itself as ‘global’, supporting the production of ‘local authentic stories’ which are distributed and ‘loved everywhere’ (see Wayne and Ribke, 2024 in this issue for more detail). As Asmar et al. (2023: 36) have observed of the platform, ‘By appealing to discourses of global citizenship and diversity, Netflix brands itself as a translator across cultures able to speak to everyone’.

In contrast to the happy, global, ‘branded diversity’ (Bengesser and Sørenson, 2024) of Netflix, far less attention has been given to the ‘diversity’ offered by the established national broadcasters, and especially public service broadcasters, as they have moved into the video-on-demand era. Diversity has long been central to the function and responsibilities of public service media, as set out in their various charters and remits. To a lesser extent, we can also find diversity requirements in the regulatory frameworks or guidelines that govern many national commercial broadcasters which are expressed, for example, in minimum requirements for different arts, regional, language group, public interest, or children’s content. Distinct from the emphasis on ‘DEI’ (Diversity, Equity and Inclusion) workforce initiatives or cosmopolitan content that characterise the most visible diversity talk, here diversity is conceptualised in relation to public values of democratic deliberation, universalism, pluralism, social cohesion, solidarity and access. These requirements for diversity vary in their precise formation in response to the different cultural and historical contexts that shape a nation’s demographics, social stratification, and political economy.

Screen ‘diversity’ is therefore at once highly visible and often overlooked. Our intention with this special issue, and in this introductory article, is to bring the complexity of ‘diversity’ into view among scholars who study streaming services and the screen industries. In this issue we provide an overview of recent research in screen diversity studies, encompassing critical evaluations of diversity at the major US-based platforms but situating these alongside studies of smaller, national and local streaming providers. We position contemporary scholarship on screen diversity in relation to existing research on industry formations, content catalogues and platform interfaces, and also in relation to wider scholarship from cultural and media industries studies, screen and cultural studies, and platform studies. To what extent have major global and smaller regional video-on-demand streaming platforms invested in screen diversity at the level of genres, languages, country of origin, social representation or creative labour? Just how ‘diverse’ are the catalogues of VOD services? How is this content represented to audiences and made discoverable through platform interfaces and recommendation systems? How might this vary across the spectrum of different VOD providers?

The papers in this special collection examine screen diversity in the streaming era across a range of platforms encompassing major subscription VOD (SVOD) platforms, social media video platforms, smaller regional VOD platforms, as well as the ‘catch up’ services of national broadcaster VOD (BVOD) and public service equivalents. They consider a range of categories of diversity and difference, and the communities affected. They traverse different markets, countries and language groups, covering developments in Australia, Brazil, Canada, France, Norway, Germany, Denmark, the UK and the United States, among other locations. The contributions are varied in terms of methods and approaches, drawing on interviews, media industries studies research, platform studies research, policy analysis, textual and discourse analysis. Despite the range of topics, contexts and methods featured, there are a series of broader themes and concerns across the papers, and the existing scholarship, which we explore here. In this article we examine how streaming platforms are addressing diversity at the levels of industry, policy, texts, technologies and audiences. At each level, we observe different definitions, operationalisations and practices of ‘diversity’ that are informed by a range of disciplinary theorisations, policy histories and priorities, and national and regional contexts, all of which come to intersect with each other in new and challenging ways in the VOD era. We argue that to properly respond to the problem of ‘diversity’, research on screen diversity and on streaming must engage with these diverse dimensions of ‘diversity’.

Defining diversity

Within media studies and policy, diversity is at once a ‘foundation principle’ (Napoli, 1999) and an elusive object about which there is ‘no clearly agreed specific definition’ (Ranaivoson, 2019: 101). Diversity is understood to be central to democratic functioning, necessary to promote informed decision-making, citizen welfare and a well-functioning democracy (Napoli, 1999: 9). Much of media studies scholarship and policy relating to diversity has focused on news media, in particular on concerns around the concentration of ownership, imperialism and global flows of information. This work has considered how theories of source, content and exposure diversity (Napoli, 1999) or structural and performance diversity (McQuail, 1992) can be mobilised to understand the impact of media ownership and concentration on the variety, balance and disparity of content (Ranaivoson, 2007) made available to and consumed by audiences in given contexts. More broadly, cultural diversity is recognised as integral to human rights, as set out in the umbrella terms of UNESCO’s Universal Declaration on Cultural Diversity (2001) and Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions (2005). Here diversity is understood as not only supporting the open sharing of knowledge and ideas but also supporting the expression of ‘the uniqueness and plurality of the identities of the groups and societies making up humankind’ (UNESCO, 2001). Diversity is essential to human flourishing, intercultural understanding, international solidarity, economic and cultural development (UNESCO, 2001). Diversity is also understood to be good for and valued by consumers (Ranaivoson, 2012). Finally, as noted above, the term and concept of ‘diversity’ has gained increased popular visibility in the global north, shaped by US-centred understandings of racial justice, as a specifically identity-based concept, and as part of an ongoing commitment to ideologies and policies of equality and inclusion, particularly in workforce and institutional cultures.

A range of typologies for understanding, measuring and assessing media diversity have emerged, most prominently Napoli’s conceptualisation of source (media outlets, producers, workforce), content (demographic, opinions, format) and exposure diversity (audiences). Many of the articles in this issue draw on Napoli’s (1999: 8-9) typology and in particular the observation that exposure diversity – the extent to which audiences find, view and value ‘diverse’ content – remains far less examined by policymakers and analysts, and we would argue screen and media scholars too. Again though, Napoli’s focus is primarily on diversity as it relates to news and information, with exposure diversity linked to citizens’ ability to ‘increase their knowledge, encounter opposing viewpoints and become well-informed decision-makers who are better capable of fulfilling their democratic responsibilities in a self-governing society’ (Napoli, 1999: 9). Another framework applied specifically to the audio-visual and platform economy is Ranaivoson’s work (see 2007, 2019, Ranaivoson and Domazetovikj, 2023), which considers diversity as a mix of variety, balance and disparity. Here, ‘variety’ corresponds to the number of different categories or types in a given system, ‘balance’ represents the way each type is represented, and ‘disparity’ reflects the dissimilarity between types. Beyond this initial definition, Ranaivoson notes that diversity in cultural and creative contexts must also consider the difference and interaction between supplied and consumed diversity, where the former refers to the products or works made available and the latter to what is actually consumed, which depends on both supplied diversity and consumer tastes (6). They also suggest that a third dimension of a definition of cultural diversity needs to consider the diversity of the products/works themselves, the diversity of the producers who create them, and the diversity of the people who obtain and consume them (7).

Media diversity has been profoundly challenged by convergent media ecologies, which have seen the rise of hugely powerful tech companies and legacy media companies extending themselves more or less unchecked into new domains. Diversity, especially ‘exposure diversity’, has also been disrupted by algorithmically informed, personalised recommender systems, which shape what content is made visible and promoted to different audiences (Ranaivoson, 2019; Ranaivoson and Domazetovikj, 2023). Again, much of the concern around exposure diversity for audiences has focused on how news and information is distributed via platforms and shaped by algorithmic recommendations, as evident in the literature on ‘echo chambers’ and ‘filter bubbles’ (see, e.g. Pariser, 2011). As several articles in this issue point out, these concerns can and do play out differently for audio-visual content, and across different streaming platforms. Many public broadcasters or national broadcasters in fact make little to no use of recommendation algorithms in how they display and make content visible to users on their VOD platforms. Nonetheless, not personalising recommendations may have implications for the visibility of other types of diversity, with VODs, for example, opting for the most palatable synopses or images to entice a broad viewership, which might invisibilise race, disability or gender (as Ceuterick and Malet, 2024 discuss in more detail in this issue).

The articles in this issue contribute to an emerging body of work focused on the challenges for understanding, defining and measuring diversity within the specific context of streaming video. Many of the articles are concerned with content diversity within VOD catalogues (see Lobato et al., 2024 in this issue for an in-depth overview of the field to date). The articles examine how this content is presented and exposed to viewers via recommendation, promotion, categorisation and textual features of VOD interfaces. They consider how different demographics and communities might be targeted (or ignored) in these representations. And finally, they assess the extent to which these activities and affordances align with much larger and longer term objectives for diversity, including pluralism, social-cohesion, competition, effective self-government and even human flourishing. Most importantly, we argue, the articles in this issue demonstrate the importance of paying careful attention to the different types and dimensions of diversity and how these might intersect, contradict and impact each other.

A key theme that emerges across these discussions is the complexity of defining diversity in the transnational environment of global SVODs. As Bengesser and Sørenson (2024) note, diversity in representation and pluralism in perspectives are values inscribed in the remits of national public service media. But local perspectives on and approaches to diversity are necessarily different across national borders, as well as between national broadcasters and transnational SVODs. Their article examines some of these differences by comparing how public value is inflected and expressed across three national VODs (British BBC, Danish DR and German ARD), testing four strategies for measuring how specific public priorities for diversity are addressed through platform technologies. These models are then compared to what the authors call the ‘branded diversity’ of an SVOD like Netflix, examining what it means for the concept when algorithmic taste communities supersede national, cultural or demographic differences.

Jenner’s (2024) article expands on this concern with how diversity is understood differently across national borders. Jenner considers how the discourse and operation of diversity on Netflix interacts with the evolution of streaming television from an HBO style of ‘quality’ production to what Jenner calls a ‘transnational middlebrow’. In this middlebrow mode, which she argues values a non-specific form of progressive political neutrality, Netflix’s diversity measures aim to address universal issues in ways that can be easily consumed across borders – an ambition that makes it impossible to meaningfully address diversity issues in a nationally specific manner. As a result, Jenner concludes that Netflix’s brand of diversity overwhelmingly demonstrates a form of visibility politics that aims to generate quantifiable data – reducing issues of diversity to sheer numbers as part of the ‘Silicon Valley Ethos’ rather than investing in nationally specific representation. In an article that is similarly interested in such strategies of quantification, Wayne and Ribke (2024) interrogate Netflix’s quintessential diversity claim that its commissions ‘come from anywhere’ and are ‘loved everywhere’. The authors analyse weekly Global Top 10 list data for English-language and non-English-language series and films across 2 years. They argue that this data creates a series of false equivalences between English and non-English-language content by working to obscure economic, cultural, technological and political differences across local media ecosystems, illustrating how this occurs in both South Korean and Latin American contexts.

Other articles contribute to the conversation about what diversity ‘is’ in the VOD environment by examining how streaming technologies and practices impact established understandings of different identity categories. As with Jenner’s consideration of a ‘transnational middlebrow’, these articles are centrally concerned with the place and function of evolving television modalities on discourses of plurality and inclusion. A key theme for this discussion is LGBTQ+ content. Working from the premise that queer media studies has always been interested in questions of definition, Monaghan’s (2024) article asks ‘what is queer media in the age of streaming video?’ Reflecting on how queerness is defined as a cultural category by the curation practices and labels on Australian SVODs and BVODs, Monaghan argues that video on demand raises urgent questions about how to hold onto the complexity of queerness in the face of information practices that solidify and codify queer styles, aesthetics, forms and narratives. With a similar interest in the power of platforms, Griffin’s (2024) article thinks across the categories of ‘online TV’ and ‘social media entertainment’ to consider how the funding, production and experience of ‘the object known as ‘television’ and the category ‘LGBTQ+ representation’ have become wide and varied’. Arguing that analysis of content in this environment must remain attuned to both the continuities and differences between platforms, Griffin mobilises diversity as method rather than identity category – bringing together a range of diversely funded and distributed texts to consider the relationship these mechanisms have on the representation of HIV+ queer people. Finally, Fraccari and Kerrigan (2024) address the disconnections between Netflix’s diversity branding and corporate practices around trans inclusivity. Supporting the points raised by Jenner about Netflix’s reliance on visibility politics, their article discusses a series of internal events at the company that reveal a significant gap between their transliberalist corporate performativity and how trans cultural workers are actually treated – arguing for the continued scrutiny of how SVODS uphold and reinforce their equity and inclusivity principles in understanding if and how these platforms are advancing what diversity means.

Doing diversity

A central concern that emerges across the contributions to this special issue, is how to survey and measure the scale and nature of inequalities that exist within the screen industries, and the relative success of cultural and media policy and industry practice in remedying these inequalities at local, national and regional levels. In recent years, there has been increasing attention given to critically analysing the performance and function of myriad new policies and initiatives that have been introduced in the service of improving screen diversity. All of the global streaming giants, including Netflix, Amazon Prime, and Disney+, have made very visible public commitments to diversity, equity and inclusion in recent years. Of these, Netflix has been arguably the most high-profile in its campaigns. In 2017, Netflix launched #FirstTimeISawMe, showcasing the diversity of its employees and, as a result, its inclusive programming. This was followed by the first Netflix Inclusion Report published in 2021, with an updated version the following year (Myers, 2021). Amazon developed an Inclusion Policy and launched its Inclusion Policy Playbook in 2021, an open-source manual setting out Amazon MGM Studios’ DEI practices and focus on creating content that is representative of its audiences. Under the #inclusionmatters hashtag, the company also posted a video on YouTube about its employee Affinity Groups, highlighting, like Netflix, how diversity in its workforce ‘unlocks’ content creativity and innovation (Amazon, 2021). Meanwhile, Disney+’s parent company, the Walt Disney Company, has also made public commitments to ‘celebrating an inclusive, respectful world’ (Disney, 2023).

The discourse of diversity functions principally as a commercially oriented branding exercise for the streaming platforms, with ‘diversity’ invoked to gesture to both cultural diversity and diversity of catalogue offering (see Asmar et al., 2023; Havens and Stoldt, 2022; Khoo, 2023), without clearly distinguishing between the two. Netflix’s ‘diversity’ branding, for example, has been interpreted as a strategy to reach broader markets, expand territories, and solicit niche audiences (Asmar et al., 2023), with the service seen to be presenting distinctive ‘global’ diversity in the form of non-Western content, without really addressing cultural diversity within Western screen industry contexts (Yoon, 2023). Research on how different national contexts influence the sphere of what is possible in terms of cultural diversity have begun to appear (Chambwera, 2023; Potter, 2023). Within these different national contexts, the barriers limiting the effectiveness of industry schemes are impacted variously by government regulation, commercial necessities and company priorities and cultures of practice.

There is now a significant body of recent scholarship on cultural policy and cultural labour, which has sought to measure and understand the exclusionary practices that have produced enduring inequalities across the creative and cultural industries (Brook et al., 2020; Edmond, 2023; Saha, 2018). Studies of workforce inequalities within the film and television industries specifically have examined the experiences of women and minority groups in trying to establish and sustain careers in these fields (see, e.g. Berridge, 2020; Calderón-Sandoval, 2021) and there are also critical assessments of various government policies to improve screen workforce diversity (see, e.g. Nwonka, 2015; Nwonka and Malik, 2018). However, there remains comparatively limited work on assessing the efficacy and impacts of the latest DEI policies and practices at the streaming services, and less again on streaming services outside of the US (some important exceptions include Chambwera, 2023 on South African contexts and Potter, 2023 on Australian contexts).

The articles in this special collection take up this challenge by examining the state of industry policy and practice for addressing inequalities at the levels of workforce, content, and culture. Our contributors look at the role played by industry discourses within cultures of practice – what do industry discourses of diversity practically do? What specific policies have been introduced by or to address the streaming sector specifically? How are SVODs engaging with existing local funding, initiatives and policies to support DEI efforts? And with what success?

In the Canadian context, Boisvert (2024) analyses Canadian national SVOD services and their affordances for storytelling and representation. Boisvert argues that French-language original content on Canadian streaming platforms, including ICI TOU.TV, Club Illico, and Crave, are often overlooked, despite the significant amount of original programming commissioned. Boisvert’s study provides a macro approach, using a database of all original French-language series as well as interviews with creators, producers, and programmers, to identify trends (narrative, aesthetic and ideological) and document the challenges of producing diverse francophone series in the digital era. Of note is a significant increase in the representation of LGBTQIA+ and gender diversity in French-language series, with over 50% now including at least one LGBTQIA + character. Moreover, in a context where parity policies and inclusion initiatives have recently been adopted, there is an increase in the number of women cast in leading roles, and better inclusion of racial diversity. Nevertheless, characters with a disability, or from marginalised races and ethnicities, are still relegated to supporting roles. Boisvert urges us to seek a better understanding of the ‘storytelling affordances’ of national/regional SVOD services (Lotz and Lobato, 2023), in this case those found in Canada.

Meimaridis, Mazur andl Rios (2024) analyse how Brazilian cultural identity and values related to diversity are depicted in content commissioned by major U.S.-based SVOD companies and Brazil’s largest local service, Globoplay. The authors analyse local trade press coverage and examine SVOD originals produced in Brazil from 2016 to 2023 to explore the portrayal of Brazilianness to global audiences, and the mediation of diverse national representation, investigating the extent to which Brazilian SVODs disrupt established representation norms and perpetuate national stereotypes. The lack of diversity of Brazil’s media representation can be attributed to the hegemony of media conglomerate Grupo Globo and its free-to-air network, TV Globo, where the depiction of class, gender, and race has been notably narrow, lacking representation of black and Indigenous characters. In Brazil, SVODs play a vital role in challenging traditional narratives and increasing the representation of historically marginalised groups. However, their approach to diversity is often seen as a branding strategy driven by profit rather than a genuine representation of cultural richness (Jenner, 2018). To what extent are these productions truly mediating any form of diverse national representation? Here, we understand the diversity SVODs provide as a product of technological, cultural, industrial, and economic affordances that supply these services with different possibilities and limitations than those traditionally implemented in linear television, particularly that of Brazil which still caters to a mass audience. By challenging the traditional media gatekeepers SVODs provide a different perspective on issues of cultural diversity, imperialism, and globalisation.

The contributors to this issue show how diversity is used to appeal to transnational audiences and indigenise offerings using local talent, while at the same time presenting ‘global’ stories that foster connections between different cultures, often mediating between these polarities. Netflix is exemplary in this regard, with these diversification strategies proving highly profitable for the streamer. Together, the articles consider how diversity and inclusion are managed, promoted and negotiated across countries with different colonial histories and immigration patterns, operating within different government regulatory schemes and commercial environments.

Discovering diversity

Another important way that issues of ‘diversity’ have been addressed within existing scholarship on video streaming platforms is through analysis of the make-up of VOD catalogues (also referred to as libraries). Indeed, so central is this approach to the research on streaming that nearly all the articles in this issue make some use of catalogue analysis as a method and framework for understanding diversity. In the existing scholarship on VOD catalogues, scholars have measured the relative volume of local content (usually by country-of-origin, sometimes by language groups), to help determine the overall ‘diversity’ of content made available by major VOD services in different global markets. This work has also sought to assess the relative discoverability and prominence of different types of content within the catalogue via a VOD’s interface and its various search, promotion and recommendation functions.

Catalogue research has revealed significant imbalances in terms of where screen titles come from, in keeping with long-standing concerns about cultural imperialism and global flows of content (Larroa, 2023). Much of this scholarship has documented a high volume of US and ‘international’ content, relative to local or regional content. In the case of Netflix, for example, this catalogue profile was acknowledged very explicitly by the company, which claimed 80%–85% of their catalogue mix in a given global market was Hollywood or international content, and that this large volume of imported content was key to securing subscriptions (in Lobato, 2019: 135-6). Often the remaining 15%–20% of ‘local’ content on offer was very loosely interpreted (Spanish language might count as ‘local’ in Latin American countries), it could be significantly less than the claimed 20%, or it might be of poor quality.

Catalogue studies have also called attention to the complexities and nuances in how this balance plays out in different regions and language markets, across major US and local streaming services, which are shaped by different business legacies and profit models. In their analysis of the content libraries of Netflix, Disney+ and Paramount+, Lotz et al. (2022) find the streaming services that originate with Hollywood studios, such Disney+ and Paramount+, are ‘overwhelmingly’ dominated by US-produced titles, while Netflix’s library has more global titles than US ones. In English-language dominant markets – Australia, Canada and the UK – the volume of US-produced titles is particularly pronounced (Lotz and Eklund, 2024). Whereas, non-US-based domestic services in non-English-dominant markets – such as Globoplay in Brazil or Zee5 in India, ‘consistently offer more domestic titles’ (Lotz and Eklund, 2024).

Catalogue or library analysis has helped researchers document the regulatory imbalances between streamers and local broadcasters (and their VOD off-shoots) in terms of local content requirements, as well as requirements for public service, educational, arts, sports and children’s content. As such, catalogue analysis has played a key role in contemporary policy debates. This research has also helped articulate the many difficulties with applying conventional broadcast schedule measures to on-demand streaming services. How might existing regulations that call for a certain number of hours of airtime in primetime, for example, translate when it comes to an on-demand catalogue? How do we assess not only volume but also issues of accessibility, discoverability and prominence? As Lobato and Scarlata (2022) point out, there is now a ‘complex amalgam of discovery mechanisms’, encompassing VOD catalogues, platform interfaces, personalised recommendation systems, third-party bundle platforms, and smart TV hardware.

In this issue, Lobato et al. (2024) provide a critical typology of research into VOD catalogues and interface analysis. They observe that most VOD catalogue or library research has focused on measuring the relative diversity and discoverability of categories that are easily identifiable via content-meta data: year, genre, format, language and country of origin (noting that even definitions of these can vary). They reflect on the potential and limitations of existing approaches, including a tendency towards ‘simple counting’ and the preponderance of large-scale quantitative analysis of SVOD catalogue data, often with the aid of expensive databases licensed from third-party commercial data analytics firms, sometimes at the expense of more integrated and contextualised analysis.

As Lobato, Scarlata and Wils (2024) note, considerably less attention has been paid to variables that are harder to define, such as those relating to social representation or identities, which require much more labour-intensive contextualisation and interpretation (recent exceptions include Monaghan, 2023, whose work is discussed elsewhere in this introduction; Khoo, 2023; Gaw, 2022). Ongoing questions remain about how we can measure the volume and type of less easily defined variables of ‘diversity’ through analysis of streaming service catalogues. And following that, how might we assess the relative accessibility, discoverability and prominence of ‘diverse’ content presented to viewers via VOD interfaces? And what new imbalances or contradictions might we find between existing media policy and the technological and promotional logics of VOD platforms when it comes to questions of ‘diversity’?

Many of the articles in this issue pick up this challenge. In particular, Scarlata and Lynch (2024) provide much-needed focus on second and third-tier streaming services that do not gain as much scholarly attention as Netflix and Prime Video. They examine Hayu and Passionflix, two female-centric SVODs that provide gender-curated content. The authors argue that for these services, traditional demographic thinking remains fundamental to their core business model. Assuming a female demographic with agency, taste and choice, the services approach their audience in a familiar way while offering new experiences.

Ceuterick and Malet (2024) analyse the catalogues and content promotion of five streaming services in France and Norway, considering how different national contexts, as well as commercial and public interests, affect diversity and inclusion. Comparing the national public platforms (Slash/ France TV and NRK TV) with popular commercial national platforms (Canal+ in France and Viaplay in Norway), together with how Netflix features in France and Norway, the authors undertake a close analysis of the textual features of the platforms, in particular the thumbnails of various locally produced screen titles. They show how diversity (or its absence) as represented in the interfaces of the various platforms can align with or contradict broader industry funding and policy initiatives to improve screen diversity.

Many of the articles in this issue are interested in how diversity is represented to audiences via VOD platform interfaces, and how diverse content might be made discoverable to audiences. This represents a shift from analysing the catalogue itself to analysing how audiences for streaming video are exposed to and consume diverse content from within the catalogue. This brings us to the final theme for our issue of ‘Streaming Diversity’, which considers how audiences might navigate pathways to diverse content.

Pathways to diversity

The articles within this special issue provide novel insights into how audiences are addressed, and how audiences engage with streaming technologies. In doing so, they deepen our understanding of how diversity is experienced, interpreted, and navigated within a complex digital ecosystem by increasingly segmented audiences.

There is a burgeoning field of research which has emerged over the last 15 years to account for the changing nature of audiences within digital media environments. In some cases, there has been a shift in the framing of audiences to ‘users’ to provide insight into user agency and how audiences are accessing, navigating, and engaging with digital interfaces. Much of this framing of audiences as ‘users’ has been driven by research into digital media economies and platform studies that situate individuals as ‘active’, and engaged in both the creation and consumption of content (Bruns, 2008; Livingstone, 2003).

In providing an overview of the concepts of audiences, users, and publics, Napoli (2022) argues for a deeper understanding of the evolving role of ‘aggregations of individuals who are engaged with media’ within the digital media ecosystem. Napoli (2022) draws attention to the developments of measuring, targeting, and predicting audience behaviour. The digital transition has brought about the potential for increasingly segmented audiences based on a wide range of demographic criteria. He lays out how audience research has conceptualised a two-stage process for the consumption of media content (Napoli, 2022). First, the decision to consume content via a particular media, a stage Napoli argues is fairly predictable, while the second is about the selection of individual content options which he argues remains ‘highly unpredictable’. Audience research in this area highlights how consumption choices are related to both the characteristics and factors relating to media consumers (preferences, tastes, access, awareness of options) and media factors (including technologies); making it clear the dynamics between both structural and individual factors that contribute to and influence audiences’ choices (Napoli, 2022: 69). An ongoing tension that emerges from discussions within this special issue is whether audiences want ‘diverse’ content (and of course what ‘diverse’ even means to audiences) and what public responsibilities VODs have to provide and make visible diverse content.

Napoli (2022: 70) also discusses how audience research has focused on how consumers grapple with the ‘long tail’ – essentially the greater access and greater amount of content made available with contemporary digital storage and distribution systems. Wider communications research has also attempted to address how audiences deal with a deluge of information and content, leading some to describe the phenomenon as an ‘info-glut’ (Andrejevic, 2013). When faced with an overwhelming amount of content, some studies have found audiences favour more traditional mass-appeal content over niche or specialised content. This is a dynamic Scarlata and Lynch (2024) grapple with in their article focussing on independent and marginal SVODs that operate separately from or as subsidiaries of major media conglomerates.

Wider audience and engagement research has worked to illustrate ‘pathfinding’ behaviours to conceptualise how audiences are discovering content within an increasingly fragmented digital environment. Hill (2019: 187) argues that audiences and media industries are both ‘pathfinders’, illustrating a push-pull dynamic where, ‘The industry pushes audiences into branded places’ while audiences are ‘changing and refiguring their affective, temporal and geographical relations’ with platforms, services and media more broadly. Hill’s (2019) work here feeds into our understandings of the social and media ‘imaginaries’ that characterise and shape audience engagement with media services. Beyond research into media and digital literacies, other audience research has attempted to shed light on how audiences discover contemporary television.

Johnson et al. (2023) identify two other streams of research into discovery pathways. One focuses on interrogating platform affordances (including algorithmic and user interface design) and ‘imagined affordances’ to understand how users are experiencing the personalisation of content and recommendation algorithms (Markham et al., 2019; Nagy and Neff, 2015). Overlapping with platform studies, research into the technological affordances of streaming and television services examines how platform design shapes audience pathways (Markham et al., 2019). Another ‘stream’ of research Johnson, Hills and Dempsey (2013: 3) identify is that of audience ‘engagement’: in which ‘audiences are ensnared by, or negotiate, the technological and industrial determinants of platform logics’. The focus on engagement typically presents a dichotomy between media power and audience agency.

Recent audience research concerned with discoverability within the contemporary context of online and internet-distributed television content has drawn attention to the complexity of discoverability and the different ‘routes to content’ that shape audience engagement when faced with a diversity of content, technologies and services (Johnson et al., 2023). Johnson, Hills and Dempsey (2023: 5) expand on, and bring together, previous literature to explore how audiences find specific content within ‘industrial, technological and socio-cultural contexts that are meaningful for them, and through imagined affordances and/or other types of negotiated imaginaries that are realised in everyday practices’. Crucially, their work does not just focus on technologically ‘savvy’ consumers that they argue have dominated audience research but also includes users negotiating various levels of technical literacies. The concepts they put forward frame ‘discoverability as situated audience activity (something achieved by people via specific “imaginaries” embedded in ordinary, everyday practice) rather than as a matter of policy debate/anxiety (something imagined or assumed by industrial concerns)’ (Johnson et al., 2023: 6).

Collectively, much of the research into contemporary television audiences and users of SVOD services has highlighted the tensions between industry rhetoric and audience behaviour, with Johnson et al. (2023) calling for more qualitative research into the dynamics of discoverability that takes into account how audiences are situated within a larger ecosystem subjected to algorithmic logics of platformisation and an assemblage of mediatised information resources that shape ‘routes to content’. Several of the contributions within this special issue further address this call, most notably Balanzategui, Baker and Clift’s (2024) important research into children’s navigational and discovery practices with streaming technologies. Balanzategui, Baker and Clift highlight a lack of research into audience attitudes regarding the discoverability of content on streaming platforms and contribute new insights into how children and parents navigate SVOD platforms. Requirements for high-quality children’s television content have long been an important (but now seemingly abandoned) policy in Australia, one example of the complex national contexts that impact studies of ‘media diversity’. Balanzategui, Baker and Clift draw attention to navigational practices as well as parents’ perspectives on the children’s habits with platform interfaces to extend research into the issues relating to the discoverability of local content in the contemporary digital media landscape. They raise interesting questions around children’s cultural literacies in their ability to identify and discover local content and emphasise the importance of exposure to local content to help situate children within their own social-cultural contexts; a point Potter (2015) has previously established. Their work further extends and argues for more research into the ‘routes to content’ (Johnson et al., 2023) to help understand how audiences are engaged in discovery practices and provide a richer understanding of exposure diversity.

This special issue highlights the importance of localised audience research in terms of engagement practices and how these influence audience values and interpretation of diverse content within very different social, cultural, political, and regulatory contexts. Even more importantly, this special issue highlights the urgent need for further and ongoing research that captures audience and user practices with VOD interfaces, especially in terms of localised audience engagement across the broader digital landscape and their multiplatform navigational practices.

Conclusion

‘Streaming Diversity' provides new approaches to understanding how screen diversity is shaped by streaming technologies, including questions about whose stories are being produced, who gets to tell them, and whether and how these stories are being shown to audiences. Collectively, the contributions within this issue grapple with the layered complexity of global platform ecosystems within which diversity is a negotiated concept. Bringing together expertise and approaches drawn from media and cultural policy analysis, screen and media industries analysis, film and screen studies, queer studies and cultural studies, this issue generates critical new insights into how major, and minor, VOD services are investing in ‘diverse' screen content and bringing that content to audiences, with complex consequences. The articles grapple with different dimensions and definitions of ‘diversity’ which can vary radically across regional and national contexts, across platforms, and across audiences and communities. In doing so, they demonstrate the importance for diversity scholars and streaming scholars to continue to engage with the complex, contradictory, and intersecting ways ‘diversity’ is manifest in a rapidly evolving streaming era.