BINGE-WATCHERS. BEHAVIOR PATTERNS AND EMOTIONS
BINGE-WATCHERS. BEHAVIOR PATTERNS AND EMOTIONS

Summary/Abstract: TV series’ consumption patterns drastically changed with the advent of online streaming services such as Netflix, Hulu or Amazon Prime Video, which give users unlimited access to a huge media archive on a monthly subscription basis. Changes in the distribution system of TV series entail the emergence of a binge-watching cultural phenomenon. Since 2013, when the term ‘binge-watch’ made it on the Oxford Dictionaries Word of the Year shortlist, binge-watching has become the new norm of TV series’ consumption for many fans and casual watchers. This paper aims at analyzing how people relate to their own binge-watching consumption habits and what are the most common behaviours and affects related to binge-watching. For this purpose, the paper considers a corpus of 6951 Facebook comments mentioning the habit of binge-watching, which were extracted from the official Facebook pages of 108 popular TV shows. The content analysis shows clear correlations between different types of behaviours and emotions related to binge-watching, and it shows a connection between the type of distribution and the affects experienced by consumers. Consequences and implications of these outcomes are futher discussed.

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