Streaming Media Platforms and Digital Distribution
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- ISBN 9781032472966
- Weight: 453g
- Dimensions: 152 x 229mm
- Publication Date: 03 Aug 2026
- Publisher: Taylor & Francis Ltd
- Publication City/Country: GB
- Product Form: Hardback
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Centered on streaming media platforms, this book explores how digital technologies have fundamentally transformed the way we understand entertainment and the tightening nexus between technology, culture, and capitalism.
Building on a wide-ranging body of interdisciplinary inquiry, extending from media industry studies and critical political economy to media archaeology and film and media studies more generally, this book presents a unique critical approach that moves from macro-level analysis of industry economics to micro-level considerations focusing, for example, on streaming’s impact on changing narrative styles, genre formation, and related text-based aesthetic trends. The book’s core chapters develop in-depth analyses of streaming media’s three most emblematic platforms, Disney+, Netflix, and YouTube, highlighting their specificities while also assessing their place within a larger, shifting ecosystem. In offering a comparative account attentive to the importance of both historicizing and theorizing the changes brought about by streaming, this book lays out a path for renewed critical thinking about the contradictions in contemporary media and their impact on life in the 21st century.
This is essential reading for advanced students and scholars interested in the ever-evolving relationship between technology, media, culture, and economics.
Kevin McDonald is a lecturer in the Department of Communication Studies at Cal State Northridge, USA. He is the author of Film Theory: The Basics (revised and expanded 2nd edition, 2022) and coeditor of The Netflix Effect: Technology and Entertainment in the 21st Century (2016). His teaching and research focus on film, contemporary popular culture, and the intersections between media, technology, and performance.
