Beyond Gatekeeping: Web Series as Entrepreneurial Emancipation in the Contemporary Streaming Era

This study explores fictional web series as a disruptive alternative to traditional television industry gatekeeping systems, offering actor/producers unprecedented pathways to creative agency and entrepreneurial career development. This research documents how practitioners, industry bodies, broadcasters, and audiences define “successful” web series, examining how “value” is generated beyond traditional economic metrics. Drawing on semi-structured interviews with a cross-section of Australian screen industry representatives, it applies an “entrepreneuring as emancipation” framework to reconceptualize the industrial significance of web series as vehicles for challenging established hierarchies. Finally, it analyzes how the low-budget format enables actor/producers to develop entrepreneurial identities through digital platforms while maintaining full control over creative, productive, and dissemination processes. By examining web series as tools that prioritize non-economic metrics of success, this study reveals impactful forms of career advancement, demonstrating how web series continue to transform screen industries through democratized content creation and distribution for actor/producers globally.