Seeing like a Platform: Netflix and the reorganizing of markets for audiovisual production and consumption

While the effects of digital platforms on established markets are widely recognized, we know little about the process that produces these effects. We explore this issue through a longitudinal process study of how Netflix’s entry into the European audiovisual markets reorganized these markets. We find that Netflix’s efforts hinged on the creation and use of a proprietary market information regime, offering an alternative outlook and vision for these markets compared to that of the incumbents. The focus of attention provided by these respective market information regimes had a formative effect on platformization. Rather than following a fixed lifecycle, shifts in the degree of overlap between the market information regimes of Netflix and the market incumbents resulted in a platformization process with sequential phases characterized by teleologic, evolutionary, and dialectic mechanisms. The result was a synthesis combining features of the established and the platform-based market orders. This new order had substantial effects on both production and consumption markets, including a growing imbalance between the supply and demand for creative resources and accelerated consumption, as well as wider societal effects that triggered questions regarding cultural representations and creativity.