Netflix’s competitive edge lies in its capacity to make its programmes travel. Its digital architecture and content strategy are aligned to achieve this objective. While Netflix has expanded its commissioning footprint to seek out local narratives, this pursuit of cultural specificity is shaped by commercial imperatives. Cultural specificity is no longer self-contained but reconstructed and performed as authenticity for an algorithmic infrastructure. Consequently, Netflix’s catalogue resembles a Derridean universe in which cultural difference is reconfigured as algorithmic différance . As the meaning of cultural values is deferred in time and space, the value of cultural meaning becomes fleeting and uncertain.
Jean K. Chalaby (Tue,) studied this question.