Netflix Recommends

Algorithms, Film Choice, and the History of Taste
1. Auflage 2021
ISBN: 978-0-520-38204-6
Verlag: University of California Press

Buch, Englisch, 282 Seiten, Trade Paperback, Format (B × H): 150 mm x 225 mm, Gewicht: 394 g

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 for choosing films and series are novel, effective, and widely used. 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 as alarming as their celebrants and critics maintain—and neither as trusted nor as widely used. Netflix Recommends brings to light 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.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Frey, Mattias

Fachgebiete

• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Spezielle Soziologie Mediensoziologie
• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Spezielle Soziologie Wissenssoziologie, Wissenschaftssoziologie, Techniksoziologie
• Mathematik | Informatik EDV | Informatik Digital Lifestyle Internet, E-Mail, Social Media
• Geisteswissenschaften Theater- und Filmwissenschaft | Andere Darstellende Künste Filmwissenschaft, Fernsehen, Radio
• Sozialwissenschaften Medien- und Kommunikationswissenschaften Medienwissenschaften

Inhaltsverzeichnis

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

Über Autor(innen)

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.