Project Details
Projekt
Media Cultures of Streaming: Temporality, Infrastructure and Valuation
Applicant
Professor Dr. Urs Stäheli
Subject Area
Sociological Theory
Theatre and Media Studies
Theatre and Media Studies
Term
from 2015 to 2023
Project identifier
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 258454408
This project addresses the question which modes of temporality are created by on-demand-streaming technologies and practices (e.g. Spotify, Netflix, Last.fm). Media streaming is usually defined as distribution of compressed video and audio files through digital networks. Streaming is often experienced as continuous flow in 'real time'. Drawing from our former project on sharing platforms in tourism, we ask how streaming platforms configure the access to media content and communities in terms of temporality. Self-descriptions of streaming media assume that streaming enables one to participate in the data flow in 'real time'. In contrast to this discourse, we are interested in analyzing heterogeneous temporalities, temporal ruptures and synchronization that produce the 'real-time' effect of streaming. Such an approach aims at grasping the temporal models that are inscribed within media technologies as well as the user experience of time. Our contestation is that streaming media establish new and precarious modes of temporalized media participation. We want to test and expand this hypothesis with three theoretically informed case studies. The empirical analysis of streaming aims at contributing to a general theory of media temporalities. Research area 1 ("Temporalities of Media Infrastructures") focuses on buffering technologies and how they are experienced by users. It asks which temporal arrangements of waiting and temporal ruptures are inscribed in the distribution and memory infrastructures of streaming media. Research area 2 ("Temporalities of Selections: Recommender Systems") analyzes the temporal models that are part of recommending systems (e.g. temporal models of the user, or the temporal normalization of media consumption). Research area 3 ("Temporalities of Everyday Life: Experiencing Recommendations") analyzes the enactment of algorithmically produced recommendations. It asks which 'folk theories' structure everyday practices dealing with automated recommendations, and how users employ recommendation lists. The three research areas allow us to systematically articulate the generation of temporalities by media infrastructures with temporal experiences of users. Drawing from the empirical results, the projects contributes theoretical insights of the temporality of media participation.
DFG Programme
Research Units
