‘Recommended for you’: A distant reading of BBC iPlayer

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

Video-on-demand interfaces have become a ubiquitous feature of contemporary screen culture. But despite their prevalence and the significant amount of time we spend in these liminal spaces, these interfaces are -- within the field of TV studies at least -- relatively under-theorized and rarely the subject of focused critical interrogation. Indeed, it has been noted that there are simply “no established methodologies in TV studies for studying interfaces” (Johnson, 2017:124). In addressing this methodological gap, this article develops and demonstrates an empirical and quantitative approach to the analysis of television interfaces that takes its cue from “distant reading” (Moretti, 2013).
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)264-285
Number of pages22
JournalCritical Studies in Television
Volume16
Issue number3
Early online date13 Sept 2021
DOIs
Publication statusE-pub ahead of print - 13 Sept 2021

Keywords

  • Interfaces
  • Distant Reading
  • iPlayer
  • Tableau
  • data visualisation
  • video-on-demand

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