Netflix Recommends: Algorithms, Film Choice, and the History of Taste

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.

Author: Mattias Frey
Publisher: University of California Press
Published: 10/05/2021
Pages: 282
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.85lbs
Size: 8.90h x 5.83w x 0.71d
ISBN13: 9780520382046
ISBN10: 0520382048
BISAC Categories:
- Social Science | Media Studies
- Social Science | Technology Studies
- Computers | Internet | General

About the Author

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.