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Documentary-on-Demand: Researching Audience Engagements with (Political) Documentary on Netflix

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In March 2021 Seaspiracy launched on Netflix and quickly became one of the ten most watched films on the platform. Produced and directed by British independent documentary maker Ali Tabrizi, the documentary Șinvestigation’ dramatically catalogues the human and environmental impacts of commercial fishing, revealing corruption, slavery and cruelty. Seaspiracy is a call to action, and many appear to have heeded the call, pledging to give up fish or ‘joining the movement’ via social media. There is even the option to buy Seaspiracy merchandise or purchase a vegan meal planning service. Celebrities and influencers have helped to spread the word, as have environmental activists and community groups. The filmmakers have been able to leverage this interest to raise funds and garner support for political action. We will explore Seaspiracy as exemplary of a new mode of political documentary that explicitly seeks to produce audience engagements, leveraged within a specific political context. Drawing on recent explorations of media engagement we consider the ‘push-pull’ dynamics (Hill 2019) between audiences and producers, as well as the increasingly porous boundaries between private spaces of media consumption and opportunities to act within the public sphere.

Keywords: affect ; audiences ; engagement ; Netflix ; political documentary ; video on-demand (VOD)

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Documentary-on-Demand: Researching Audience Engagements with (Political) Documentary on Netflix
Intellect , 352 (2025); https://doi.org/10.1386/9781835950685_22
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/content/books/9781835950685.c21
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References

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References

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  2. Barker, Martin (2021), ‘The concept of engagement: A cautious manifesto’, Participations, 18:1, pp. 177–205.
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  3. Bennett, Nikki and Johnson, Elizabeth (2021), ‘The potential for a “Tiger King effect”: A analysis of public and media response to the Netflix series Tiger King’, Networking Knowledge, 14:2, pp. 124–46.
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  4. Binns, Daniel (2018), ‘The Netflix documentary house style: Streaming TV and slow media’, Fusion Journal, 14:8, pp. 60–71.
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  5. Brown, Eli (2019), ‘Netflix's documentary strategy: Diego Buñuel's presentation at Sunny Side of the Doc’, Documentary Business, https://documentarytelevision.com/netflix/netflixs-documentary-strategy-diego-bunuels-presentation-at-sunny-side-of-the-doc-reported-in-detail-by-d-words-eli-brown/. Accessed 17 February 2023.
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  7. Burroughs, Benjamin (2019), ‘House of Netflix: Streaming media and digital lore’, Popular Communication, 17:1, pp. 1–17.
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  8. Chanan, Michael (2007), The Politics of Documentary, London: BFI Publishing.
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  9. Corner, John (2017), ‘Afterword: Reflections on media engagement’, Media Industries, 4:1, pp. 1–6.
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  10. Dahlgren, Peter (2009), Media and Political Engagement: Citizens, Communication and Democracy, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
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  11. Dahlgren, Peter and Hill, Annette (2020), ‘Parameters of media engagement’, Media Theory, 4:1, pp. 1–32.
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  12. Dahlgren, Peter and Hill, Annette (2023), Media Engagement, London and New York: Routledge.
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  13. de Valck, Marijke (2016), ‘Fostering art, adding value, cultivating taste: Film festivals as sites of cultural legitimation’, in M. de Valck, B. Kredell and S. Loist (eds), Film Festivals: History, Theory, Method, Practice, London and New York: Routledge, pp 100–16.
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  14. Evans, Elizabeth (2019), Understanding Engagement in Transmedia Culture, London and New York: Routledge.
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  15. Gaw, Fatima (2022), ‘Algorithmic logics and the construction of cultural taste of the Netflix Recommender System’, Media, Culture & Society, 44:4, pp. 706–25.
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  16. Gilmore, James (2017), ‘Circulating the square: Digital distribution as (potential) activism’, in C. Barker and M. Wiatrowski (eds), The Age of Netflix: Critical Essays on Streaming Media, Digital Delivery and Instant Access, Jefferson, NC: McFarland and Co., pp. 120–39.
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  18. Hill, Annette (2013), ‘Ambiguous audiences’, in B. Winston (ed.), The Documentary Film Book, London: British Film Institute, pp. 83–87.
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  20. Hill, Annette (2021), ‘Documentary imaginary: Production and audience research of The Act of Killing and The Look of Silence’, European Journal of Cultural Studies, 24:4, pp. 801–15.
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  22. Hill, Annette and Lee, Jian Chung (2020), ‘Roamers: Audiences on the move across entertainment platforms in South East Asia’, Javnost – The Public, 29:1, pp. 98–114.
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  24. Hill, Annette and Steemers, Jeanette (2017), ‘Introduction to media engagement’, Media Industries, 4:1, pp. 1–5.
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  27. Krieger, Michael (2019), ‘Unmaking a murderer: Technological affordances and the emergence of virtual audience investigative communities’, Democratic Communique, 28:2, pp. 96–121.370
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  28. Lagerwey, Jorie and Nygaard, Taylor (2022), ‘Netflix's docuseries style: Generic chaos and affect in Tiger King, in J. Baron and K. Fuhs (eds), Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem and Madness, London and New York: Routledge, pp. 28–46.
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  29. Lobato, Ramon (2019), ‘Rethinking international TV flows research in the age of Netflix’, Television and New Media, 19:3, pp. 241–56.
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  35. Nichols, Bill (1991), Representing Reality: Issues and Concepts in Documentary, Bloomington, IN and Indianapolis, IN: Indiana University Press.
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  36. Pajkovic, Niko (2022), ‘Algorithms and taste-making: Exposing the Netflix Recommender System's operational logics’, Convergence, 28:1, pp. 214–35.
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  37. Papacharissi, Zizi (2015), Affective Publics: Sentiment, Technology and Politics, New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press.
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  38. Sharma, Sudeep (2016), ‘Netflix and the documentary boom’, in K. McDonald and D. Smith-Rowsey (eds), The Netflix Effect: Technology and Entertainment in the 21st Century, New York: Bloomsbury, pp. 143–54.
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  40. Tryon, Chuck (2015), ‘TV got better: Netflix's original programming strategies and the on-demand television transition’, Media Industries, 2:2, pp. 104–116.
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     [Google Scholar]

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