"This book examines the effects of audiovisual streaming in the global South, offering a rare vantage point from which to examine the global streaming revolution. The essays illuminate the shifting media environments of relatively understudied contexts such as Brazil, Egypt, India, Lebanon, Philippines, and South Korea. The volume argues that the complexities of the global streaming landscape impel us to move beyond a simplistic theory of Western cultural imperialism imposed on the non-Western world and creates an intricate picture of contemporary media globalization, while reflecting on the changing cultural and political equation between the global North and South"--
The essays in this volume provide a textured analysis of streaming video in the global South, revealing both the impacts of and challenges faced by Northern streamers in Southern markets, as well as new possibilities and constraints experienced by producers and performers from the South.
In recent years, major streaming video companies from the global North like Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, and Disney + have begun expanding to international markets, which are increasingly in the global South. Yet, much scholarship on the streaming of film and television focuses primarily on North America and Europe. This volume contests the prevailing perspective by focusing on media environments across the vast, yet relatively understudied, contexts of Asia, Africa, and Latin America and by tracking emerging trends in digitized audiovisual culture through their example.
Moving between political-economic and textual approaches, and exploring a variety of formats and genres (from serialized drama to feature-length documentary), the volume argues that the complexities of the global streaming landscape impel us to interrogate long-standing theories of Western cultural imperialism imposed on the non-Western world and to attend closely to shifting dynamics between the global North and South.
This collection provides the first book-length study of how audiovisual streaming is reshaping media ecologies and cultural life across the global South, including Asia, North Africa, and South America.
Arvustused
Altered IP addresses. Local broadcast preferences. Nationally recognized talent. Market-specific technologies. These are some of the factors disrupting the myth that advanced capitalist nations invariably dominate the global media ecology as streaming video on demand (SVOD) technologies proliferate. This enthralling volume offers eleven fascinating case studies by key scholars writing about varied nations of the global South to correct the record. Essential for media, communication, and new technology enthusiasts, Streaming Video in the Global South alters how we understand the worlds geopolitical axes by accounting for the ground realities shaping streaming media platforms, infrastructures, and flows from a truly global vantage point. * Priya Jaikumar, Professor, University of Southern California, USA * This collection makes a vital contribution to our understanding of streaming platforms, expanding the discussion not only geographically but also by situating these platforms within broader historical, political, and cultural frameworks. While keeping the concept of platform imperialism at the core of its analysis, the volume pushes the debate further by showing how SVOD services enter into and reshape complex national and regional ecosystems across the globe. The individual chapters offer nuanced, intermedial explorations that move beyond simplistic narratives of domination or homogenization, instead revealing the multiple negotiations, resistances, and cultural specificities that shape streamings global presence. Ultimately, the collection redefines our grasp of global video streaming, showing it as a technological system and cultural practice whose influence is far-reaching, yet always unevenly distributed. * Masha Salazkina, Professor of Film and Moving Image, Concordia University, Canada *
Muu info
This collection provides the first book-length study of how audiovisual streaming is reshaping media ecologies and cultural life across the global South, including Asia, North Africa, and South America.
Acknowledgements
List of Illustrations
Introduction
Shakti Jaising (Drew University, USA) and Hadi Gharabaghi (Fairfield
University, USA)
1. The Global Netflix Documentary: Local Difference, Branding, and the
Global South
Vinicius Navarro (Emerson College, USA)
2. A Cold War Netflix: The U.S. Information Agency as a Key
Historiographic Model for the Transnational Streamer
Bret Vukoder (St. Olaf College, USA)
3. Netflixs Double-edged Sword for Local Storytelling: A Brazilian
Perspective
Daniel Rios, Melina Meimaridis, Daniela Mazur (Universidade Federal
Fluminense, Brazil)
4. Streaming Platforms in Lebanon: A Tale of Business and Politics
Wissam Mouawad (Abu Dhabi University, UAE) and Pamela Nassour (Saint-Joseph
University of Beirut, Lebanon)
5. Streaming Feminism? South Asian TV Series by/about Women
Valentina Vitali (Birmingham City University, UK)
6. Television Drama in Mexico: From Broadcast to Streaming
Paul Julian Smith (City University of New York Graduate Center, USA)
7. Watching Old Egyptian TV Shows Online: YouTube and Nostalgia for
Televisions Past
Egor Korneev (University of Michigan, USA)
8. Streaming the Nation: Salvaging the National Filipino Audience
Daniel Rudin (Le Moyne College, USA)
9. Rethinking the English Translation-Subtitles in the Age of Global
Streaming: Decision to Leave (2022) and the Korean Wave
Hiju Kim (University of California, Los Angeles, USA)
10. Streaming the Transmedial and Transcultural: Contemporary African
Cinemas and the Netflix Viewing Environment
Alexander Fisher (Queens University Belfast, UK)
11. Invoking the Shadow Archive: Three Documentaries that Look Back from
1970s Beirut
Samirah Alkassim (Author/Filmmaker, USA)
Notes on Contributors
Index
Shakti Jaising is Professor of English and Director of Film Studies at Drew University, USA. Her writing on literary and cinematic responses to colonialism, neoliberalism, and the War on Terror appears in publications like Modern Fiction Studies, Interventions, Jump Cut, and ARIEL. Jaising is the author of Beyond Alterity: Contemporary Indian Fiction and the Neoliberal Script (2023).
Hadi Gharabaghi is Visiting Assistant Professor of Film, Television, and Media at Fairfield University, USA. His work appears in prominent venues like The Journal of Cinema and Media Studies and in edited collections, including Cinema of the Arab World: Contemporary Directions in Theory and Practice (2020).
