Recursive Synergy: Latinx Digital Audiences and the Expansion of Production Studies

Abstract

This article expands production studies by centering audiences, specifically Latinx audiences, as critical agents within media production ecosystems. Using Coco (2017) and Emilia Pérez (2024) as case studies, I argue that digital audience engagement can influence production practices, award nominations, personnel decisions, and ethnoracial representation. Situating this intervention at the nexus of synergy and transindustrialism, I introduce “recursive synergy” to reconceptualize production as a continuous industrial process, extending from post-production into marketing and awards season, where audiences can digitally mobilize at different points in a media artifact’s life cycle to express dislike, prompting industries to adjust their strategies. Recursive synergy underscores the entanglement of audience labor, ethnoracial identity, and media decision-making in an era where power often feels concentrated and detached from lived audience experiences. This article demonstrates how virtual counterpublics perform cultural labor on behalf of shared ethnicity, achieving varying degrees of impact.