Algorithmic recommender systems, deployed by media companies to suggest content based on users’ viewing histories, have inspired hopes for personalized, curated media but also dire warnings of filter bubbles and media homogeneity. Curiously, both proponents and detractors assume that recommender systems are novel, effective, and widely used methods to choose films and series. Scrutinizing the world’s most subscribed streaming service, Netflix, this book challenges that consensus. Investigating real-life users, marketing rhetoric, technical processes, business models, and historical antecedents, Mattias Frey demonstrates that these choice aids are neither as revolutionary nor alarming as their celebrants and critics maintain—and neither as trusted nor widely used. Netflix Recommends illustrates the constellations of sources that real viewers use to choose films and series in the digital age and argues that although some lament AI’s hostile takeover of humanistic cultures, the thirst for filters, curators, and critics is stronger than ever.
By:
Mattias Frey Imprint: University of California Press Country of Publication: United States Dimensions:
Height: 229mm,
Width: 152mm,
Spine: 23mm
Weight: 499g ISBN:9780520382381 ISBN 10: 0520382382 Pages: 282 Publication Date:05 October 2021 Audience:
Professional and scholarly
,
Undergraduate
Format:Hardback Publisher's Status: Active
Acknowledgments Introduction 1 • Why We Need Film and Series Suggestions 2 • How Algorithmic Recommender Systems Work 3 • Developing Netflix's Recommendation Algorithms 4 • Unpacking Netflix's Myth of Big Data 5 • How Real People Choose Films and Series Afterword: Robot Critics vs. Human Experts Appendix. Designing the Empirical Audience Study Notes Selected Bibliography Index
Mattias Frey is Professor of Film, Media, and Culture at the University of Kent and the author or coeditor of seven books, including The Permanent Crisis of Film Criticism and Film Criticism in the Digital Age.