The Algorithmic Archive: Streaming Platforms and the Reorganization of Cinematic Memory

Streaming platforms are typically understood as systems of distribution. This article argues that such a view overlooks their role in structuring the conditions under which films remain visible and encounterable within platform interfaces over time. It proposes the concept of the “algorithmic archive” to describe how platform-level content management interacts with catalogue organization and interface mechanisms such as classification, ranking, recommendation, and presentation to shape cinematic visibility. Drawing on an interface-based analysis of iQIYI, a major Chinese streaming platform, the article examines three interrelated processes through which cinematic visibility is organized: classification and positioning, which structure how films already included by the platform are categorized and positioned; persistence, which sustains visibility through repeated recommendation and recirculation; and navigational attenuation, whereby films remain present and accessible but become less prominent within ordinary navigation pathways over time. Overall, these processes have formed an uneven structure of cinematic interface visibility, and thereby contributed to shaping the conditions under which films are repeatedly encountered, rediscovered, and associated with other films. This article does not assert that the platform directly determines how films are remembered, but rather argues that the platform reorganizes the conditions of cinematic encounter through catalogue organization and interface presentation, and thereby may influence the underlying conditions for the formation of cinematic memory. By focusing on these observable interface structures, this article reveals how streaming platforms participate in reconfiguring the relationship between contemporary cinematic visibility and cinematic memory.