Approaching the cultures of use: Netflix, disruption and the audience

Abstract

This article draws on an empirical research project on cultural consumption in order to respond to particular concerns this project raised about our understanding of the current regimes of consumption for television, or what this article describes as the ‘cultures of use’. While there are rich literatures around many aspects of television consumption, this article argues that there is a gap in our direct knowledge of how individuals and households consume television, across platforms and devices, in domestic spaces. In order to fill that gap and to better understand how television consumption is embedded within people’s everyday lives, television studies may need not only to ask new kinds of questions through its research but also to adapt and modify some of the modes of audience research that marked the beginnings of television audience studies.