Streaming Video in the Global South

The essays in this volume provide a textured analysis of streaming video in the global South, revealing both the impacts of and challenges faced by Northern streamers in Southern markets, as well as new possibilities and constraints experienced by producers and performers from the South. In recent years, major streaming video companies from the global North like Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, and Disney + have begun expanding to international markets, which are increasingly in the global South. Yet, much scholarship on the streaming of film and television focuses primarily on North America and Europe. This volume contests the prevailing perspective by focusing on media environments across the vast, yet relatively understudied, contexts of Asia, Africa, and Latin America and by tracking emerging trends in digitized audiovisual culture through their example. Moving between political-economic and textual approaches, and exploring a variety of formats and genres (from serialized drama to feature-length documentary), the volume argues that the complexities of the global streaming landscape impel us to interrogate long-standing theories of Western cultural imperialism imposed on the non-Western world and to attend closely to shifting dynamics between the global North and South. Read more