Netflix & Big Data: The Strategic Ambivalence of an Entertainment Company

Abstract

Netflix actively fueled what is known as the myth of big data, promoting their recommender system and data-driven production as cutting-edge, all-seeing, and all-knowing. Today, however, the company is increasingly acknowledging the role of human expertise and creativity. In this paper I explore the strategic repositioning of Netflix from technology company to entertainment company, enabling them to be understood as both “data” and “gut.” This transformation is discussed as motivated by the increasing public criticism of data and algorithms and the company’s foray into original programing. More specifically, I examine how Netflix, in public-facing materials, discusses big data and how those ideas are taken up in public discourse. These sources disclose an assumption of opposing characteristics between data and human expertise and creativity. As a point of a larger critique, I comment on the limitations of this data and human opposition for thinking about Netflix and technologies at large.