L’imaginaire médiatique de la gouvernance algorithmique

A myriad of discussions about the power of algorithmic recommendations has accompanied the emergence of Netflix as a subscription video on demand (SVOD) service and, above all, its entry into content production from 2012 onwards. According to the conventional narrative, the extremely detailed knowledge that recommendation algorithms have of users’ audiovisual consumption habits is capable of guiding the company in its creative choices, ensuring the production or acquisition of programs that are certain to meet success. This article analyzes this narrative and traces its trajectory in relation to Netflix’s development strategies. By portraying the platform as a “tech” outsider in an audiovisual sector that it intends to “disrupt”—following Silicon Valley’s rhetoric—, this discourse is essential to its financial communication, even though the logic of Netflix is increasingly similar to the traditional production process of the cultural industries. Drawing on a political economy of communication perspective we analyze it in the context of the mythical syntagma that traditionally surround the deployment of media technologies.

Christophe Magis. L’imaginaire médiatique de la gouvernance algorithmique. Cahiers Société, 2025, 7, pp.165-190. ⟨10.7202/1125080ar⟩ (lien externe). ⟨halshs-05623235⟩ (lien externe)