Relocating video cultures

Abstract

This special issue ‘relocates’ video cultures by focusing on the specific industrial dynamics and practices of six different countries. It is in conversation with scholarship that challenges the conceptualization of streaming as a universal force, and instead foregrounds the importance of location. The emergence of streaming and its disruptive influences on audiovisual industries have mostly been approached in relation to US-based multinational streaming services, and the articles in this issue demonstrate how the implications of streaming vary significantly depending on national contexts. Each contribution traces the trajectory of pre-digital cultures that led to the nation-specific consumption patterns of streaming video to date. We hope this special issue helps advance approaches that are attentive to locality and diversity beyond the US streaming culture.

The rise of streaming has reshaped industrial norms, production processes, and audience viewing practices around the world. ¹ It is not surprising that a significant body of academic work examining these changes and the implications of streaming culture continues to grow. Recent edited collections (Lotz and Lobato, 2023; Samuel and Mitchell, 2022) and journal special issues (Boyle, 2019; Arriaza Ibarra, 2022; Lobato and Lotz, 2020) have investigated the disruptive influences of streaming on existing industry and audience practices in different national contexts. Even within the studies that examine Netflix, a global streaming service, scholars have emphasized that there is no uniform disruptive effect and thus that it is important to recognize the national specificities that shape such adjustments to video ecosystems. There are a number of publications on the impact of Netflix on national media industries, such as in Turkey (Ildir and Celik Rappas, 2022), Spain (Albornoz and García Leiva, 2022), Australia (Cunningham and Scarlata, 2020), Mexico (Gómez and Muñoz Larroa, 2023), Canada (Wagman, 2017), and South Korea (Kim, 2022), as well as offered by the Global Internet TV Consortium network (Global Internet TV Consortium, 2016). Other scholars have taken a regional view, exploring the impacts of Netflix in Latin America (Straubhaar et al., 2021) and the Arab world (Khalil and Zayani, 2021), or engaged in cross-national comparative perspectives (Dwyer et al., 2018; Wayne and Castro, 2021).

However, this story of change is typically told from the vantage point of the US, or at least with regard to the implications for ‘Western democracies’ and in relation to the US-based services most widely used to date. US-based multi-territory SVOD (subscriber-funded video on demand) services like Netflix, Amazon's Prime Video, and Disney+ have dominated global subscriber tallies, but the glut of attention they attract – alongside focus on the very peculiar US market – risks obscuring the many other stories about streaming. Focusing excessively on the dynamics of US and similarly Westernized services does not provide a comprehensive picture of the contemporary media landscape. US-based services may blanket the globe, but their role in national video ecosystems varies considerably, and conditions are very different from the 1960s and 1970s when US-produced media dominated developing media systems with their exports. The conditions of the US market have been highly abnormal since the start of screen industries, and perhaps are now more particular than ever before, even though the country's long-lasting hegemony may also be in decline.

Media and cultural studies scholarship has long advocated for recognizing the contextual specificities of geopolitical, social, cultural, and economic differences, and to avoid normalizing the US media experience in relation to the rest of the world (Turner and Tay, 2009). Applying such aims to the emerging streaming landscape, this special issue titled Relocating Video Cultures aims to ‘relocate’ video cultures on two levels. First, the articles collected here explore the relocation of the centre of different national video cultures as a consequence of streaming. Each article investigates a specific video culture by uncovering industrial dynamics and practices that sustained previous norms and structures of power that, in turn, shaped the audience experience in each country. These accounts illustrate that the implications of streaming are far from uniform but tied very much to pre-existing dynamics. Second, as a special issue the articles collectively relocate the focus from Western streaming video cultures by offering in-depth analyses of countries where national services coexist alongside global streamers and demonstrate how the implications of streaming vary depending on national context.

The aim of the special issue was to first identify the characteristics of pre-digital cultures, for example, the industrial conditions that fed the dissatisfaction and/or satisfaction of viewers that supported nation-specific consumption patterns and cultural roles of video. ² After establishing underlying differences in pre-digital conditions, we then considered the contemporary national video culture – or in many cases ­cultures – and assessed how the particular shape of those emerging cultures was tied to particular industrial, social, cultural, regulatory, and economic dynamics. Each of the six contributors tells a distinct story about what happened in one country by late 2022. As a whole, the special issue identifies an array of pre-existing structural conditions and explains varied implications (to date) of digital change, global SVODs, and adjustments in viewing experiences and norms.

Melina Meimaridis (2024) argues that an important consequence of multi-territory streaming services was to provide greater access to a wider array of foreign content to Brazilian viewers. This availability exposed the limitations of existing local content, especially in terms of its narrow representation. The arrival of foreign streamers pushed the dominant broadcaster, TV Globo, to adapt to new market conditions and produce content with greater diversity. Here we see an often under-considered consequence of US-based streamers. Although many subscribers do access the US-based streamers, far more continue to rely on domestic services. The impact of the US streamers is not only a matter of what they offer, but the way they encourage innovation in sectors that had little competitive pressure to innovate.

Similarly, the multi-territory streamers have contributed to diversifying the viewing experience of South Korean viewers by providing different types of stories from those of the dominant broadcasters’ primetime melodramas. Jennifer Kang (2024) emphasizes the importance of looking at the domestic streamers’ original content as indicative of the shifts happening in Korean video cultures. Korean titles commissioned by Netflix have drawn considerable attention, but Korea's domestic streamers also offer viewers different value propositions that were uncommon in the pre-streaming video ecosystem. The original web dramas offered by services such as Kakao TV and Watcha address the changing lifestyles of viewers and underserved viewer tastes.

Asli Ildir (2024) then highlights how, prior to streaming, audiences in Turkey mainly had access to highly nationalistic series that depicted Turkey in an idealized way that catered to the export market. Turkey became a major producer for countries seeking an alternative to themes in Western content that challenged conservative norms, and the country's drama exports also derived value by attracting tourists. Western audiences may not be familiar with Turkey's pre-digital export strength because Turkey targets conservative markets, but its export revenue had significant implications for setting the conditions of domestic viewing in the country ahead of streaming's arrival. Netflix Turkey launched in 2016 and, along with domestic streaming services, disrupted the status quo of an export-focused industry by producing stories different from those of broadcasters.

Across these accounts from Brazil, Korea, and Turkey, we see how audience viewing experiences diversified in different ways with streaming adoption. Access to foreign series via global streamers was key to compelling TV Globo to diversify its storytelling and representation in Brazil, but this was not the case for Turkey and Korea, where export success of particular types of drama constrained development for the national market. Global streaming services supported the production of Turkish content more relevant for urban and progressive domestic audiences, while Korean domestic streamers aimed to fulfil audience needs that were not being served by the global streamers.

The issue then explores countries with strong film cultures: India and Nigeria. Unlike many Western countries with long histories of wide television adoption, cinema and cinemagoing were the defining aspects of Indian video culture, and the arrival of digital technologies introduced substantial changes to the significant adjustments wrought by VHS and VCD that were still being negotiated. Ishita Tiwary (2024) discusses how streaming technologies have expanded available films, especially regional films, for Indian viewers by extending distribution of such content, but also through better subtitling and dubbing. Despite the ‘global’ implications of streaming in many markets, the adjustment in Indian video cultures is more closely linked to greater access to a range of regional cinemas within the nation, and more opportunity for a variety of film cultures to be served. The experience in India is also tied to its status as a mobile-first market, where mobile screens dominate access to video content.

Likewise, Nigeria is also a movie and mobile-first market, but Godwin Simon (2024) notes how Nigerian video culture was heavily structured by videocassette trade markets and communal, relational viewing. In Nigeria, streaming introduces formality into a historically informal market and levels of personalized viewing that were uncommon in pre-digital viewing norms. The implications in Nigeria are consequently significant for established cultural practices as personalized viewing disrupts shared screening and discussion among families and extended groups, while aspects of informal culture persist alongside the formality of viewer metrics that result from digital affordances. In both India and Nigeria, increased access to and production of domestic content have been important consequences, in contrast to the greater access to ‘global’ content that has been central in many considerations.

The final case of Japan represents an interesting example as it is a highly industrialized country with strong digital technologies but remains less culturally disrupted by streaming services. Yu-Kei Tse (2024) identifies how the developments in other national contexts do not occur at nearly the same scale in Japan. Instead, broadcasters remain a dominant force in shaping industrial changes and audience viewing experiences. Notably, global streamers like Netflix and Amazon Prime Video offered uncommonly high levels of domestic content in their libraries, 40% and 70% respectively, when they entered Japan in 2015. Japan's distinct experience – both from Western norms and those of other countries discussed here – highlights the value of nation-specific accounts of streaming's implications.

The special issue closes with a comprehensive analysis based on a dataset that compares the titles of various non-US-based streamers. Amanda D. Lotz and Oliver Eklund (2024) identify different kinds of services that are overlooked when we focus only on the major multi-territory services that are US-based. The major streamers may dominate for the foreseeable future, but other types of services are sustainable and minor multi-territory, national, and specialty services perform important cultural functions as well.

The articles included in this special issue offer snapshots of different contexts in the early 2020s to destabilize our expectations of transnational industry norms and reveal how streamers have changed (or not changed) different places in different ways. They join the emerging scholarly conversation that rejects monolithic constructions of streaming as a universal force coming from the outside (Lotz and Lobato, 2023; Wayne and Sienkiewicz, 2023), and emphasizes the importance of locality as an important moderator, despite the increasingly international organization of the sector. The special issue aims to model an approach to comparative research that foregrounds analysis in specific contexts and highlights the diversity that exists beyond the US-based streaming culture.