Defusing moral panic: Legitimizing binge-watching as manageable, high-quality, middle-class hedonism

Abstract

The rise of video-on-demand streaming services has facilitated more intensive television watching. When novel consumption behaviors emerge, cultural intermediaries may be mobilized to make sense of it and potentially legitimize it. This often takes place by raising moral panic, as it draws attention to new cultural practices and asks tastemakers to take a stance. The current study takes “binge-watching” as a discursive anchor point to investigate this process. We argue that moral panic is not only a strategy that can be employed to condemn cultural practices, but by deflecting moral concerns through mechanisms of social distinction, it can also allow intermediaries to normalize new cultural phenomena. Through inductive and deductive coding of U.S. news articles on binge-watching (n: 681), we discern three pathways through which intensive video-on-demand watching is reframed: first, the shows that are binge-watched are high quality; second, binge-watching can be controlled, at least by the right type of audiences; and third, binge-watching is fun, in that if undertaken in moderation, it can be good for viewers. All three pathways resonate strongly with new middle-class dispositions. This study shows how the legitimization of new cultural boundaries demands an interplay between social distinction and moralization.

Gender Differences in Binge-Watching by Teenagers: A Uses and Gratification Analysis

“…The study's findings revealed that Entertainment, Escape, and Excitement are the primary motivations of Pakistani teenagers to resort to binge-watching. Previous literature has suggested that Entertainment (Castro et al, 2019;De Keere et al, 2020;Fernandes & Pinto, 2020;Granow et al, 2018;Halfmann & Reinecke, 2021;Nanda & Banerjee, 2020) and Escape (Castro et al, 2019;Fernandes & Pinto, 2020;Halfmann & Reinecke, 2021;Nanda & Banerjee, 2020;Panda & Pandey, 2017; are very important for indulging in binging, a phenomenon which was reinforced by the findings of the present research. Although excitement did not emerge as a major variable in previous literature, as only had discussed it, the present research findings showed that it was an important motivation for the youth.…”

“…It has been found that binge-watching can negatively and positively affect viewers (Granow et al, 2018). The main advantage of binge-watching is the opportunities it provides for entertainment, especially through a perception of autonomy (De Keere et al, 2020;Granow et al, 2018;Halfmann & Reinecke, 2021). It has also been observed that binge-watching helps in reducing the levels of anxiety while at the same time increasing the feeling of relaxation among the viewers (Cabral et al, 2020;Panda & Pandey, 2017).…”

Media practice and class-making: The anticipation of stigma and the cultural middle-class habitus

“…These studies have charted how social positions, mediated via habitus, explain how people, broadly speaking, choose to lead their lives. Recent qualitative research has supplemented the focus on statistical relations by studying how people relate to culture (De Keere et al, 2021; Jarness, 2015), and how people in different classes position themselves against the lifestyles of other classes and thereby draw symbolic boundaries across the social space (Jarness, 2017; Jarness and Flemmen, 2019; Lindell, 2020).…”

Netflix audience data, streaming industry discourse, and the emerging realities of ‘popular’ television

“…In particular, the company often emphasizes binge-viewing as a mode of audience behavior that improves upon traditional television's liveness and linear scheduling. Given the moral hazards historically associated with television and the contemporary moral panics associated with binge-viewing (De Keere et al, 2021), Netflix has much to gain through its association with binge-able programming.…”