Algorithmic Television in the Age of Large-scale Customization

Abstract

One challenge that Television Studies faces today is how to respond to the rise of an industry increasingly organized by what Antoinette Rouvroy calls “data behavioralism.” The rise of streaming prestige television, exemplified by Netflix, has significant implications within the U.S. screen industry, but the “Netflix effect,” as McDonald and Smith-Rowsey call it, is more than just a change in the industrial mode of production, means of distribution, and method of consumption. The datalogic turn on which Netflixism is based also undermines the theoretical models on which Television Studies was largely built, including theories of representation, visual interpellation and pleasure, and power as “productive.” Hence, the rise of algorithmic television is not simply a new “object” or “wave” for us to study and comment upon; it challenges the mode of knowledge-production (or dispositif) on which the field has grounded itself.

Platforms, politics and precarity: Hong Kong television workers amid the new techno-nationalist media agenda

“…Competition for the global audience is a universal phenomenon in the age of algorithmic television and large-scale customisation (Shapiro, 2020), as also shown in Hong Kong’s case. Such competition is not just among the regional TV broadcasters, but also includes the global social media platforms, OTT live-streaming entertainment services as well as millions of YouTubers, social influencers and ‘media produsers’ worldwide (Bruns, 2008).…”

“…The nature, functions and values of Hong Kong television work have evolved through four stages of techno-political changes : from a Western, new, imperialist technological tool and ‘cultural narcotic’ to tame the rebellious youths (1950s–1970s) to an indigenised, egalitarian and glorious platform to serve the public’s need for mass entertainment and mediate Chinese cultures between the East and the West/the world (1970s–1990s); from a reinvented, globalising media instrument to detach post-colonial Hong Kongers’ emotional bonding with the Great Britain and re-establish their cultural identification with the Chinese state (1990s–2010s) to an increasingly platformised, politicised yet controversial arena for containing and mediating anti-China sentiments and various cultural and political resistances (2010s–now). The last stage, which we conceptualise as the ‘moralist regime’ of TV work, is accelerated by both the rapidly changing socio-technical and political conditions of Hong Kong over the past decade leading to a progressively platformised TV industry (Shapiro, 2020) and the implementation of China’s techno-nationalist media regulations (Parks, 2020; Plantin and de Seta, 2019; Qiu, 2010).…”

“…We also discern how TV workers engage in an active sense-making process to negotiate with the techno-nationalist media agenda and exert their agency: they see themselves not only as creative workers, but also as political subjects who perceive their creative production as a means to promote social justice, actualise freedom of thought, expression, assembly and association, and also counter top-down ideological control. Amid the new regulatory and organisational constraints, they reinvent new meanings of their creative work and their professional identity through experimenting with digital platform entrepreneurship beyond the traditional TV organisational setting, re-establishing producer-consumer relationships on social and digital platforms outside the ‘supra-individual datalogic profile’ (Shapiro, 2020), and strategising creative expressions with a political undertone amid an emerging media regulatory regime. In short, the juxtaposition of neoliberal platformisation with techno-nationalism renders unique techno-political encounters and responses in Hong Kong’ television work.…”

“…An emerging trend in creating and updating multi-media contents across broadcast, online and social media platforms in addition to monitoring the 'datalogic' media consumption metrics is observed (Shapiro, 2020). When it comes to the mounting tasks beyond traditional TV work, the ad hoc cross-media projects, and continuous human resources shortages and staff departures, rather than relying on the TV organisation's better human resource management, TV workers are increasingly expected to embrace their neoliberal self: they are responsible for being flexible and resilient enough to stretch their work hours, forgo their non-work endeavours and personal obligations to upgrade their technical skillsets and fulfil their media organisations' commercial goals.…”

Hábitos de consumo de moda a través de influencers en la Generación Z

“…"Justamente por esta razón, la informática y la tecnología de las comunicaciones constituyen pilares básicos de la Sociedad de la Información" (Gómez, 1999, p.2). Shapiro (2020), explica que las nuevas tecnologías, como el uso de ordenadores y sistemas operativos portadores de información, son los medios mediante los cuales están variando las relaciones que el ser humano tiene en esta nueva sociedad. Los medios de comunicación, ofrecen modelos sociales de conducta inadecuados y los padres corren el peligro de perder parte de su influencia como Martín Critikián, Davinia; Solano Altaba, María; Serrano Oceja, José…”