Streaming Platforms in Lebanon: A Tale of Business and Politics

Abstract

This book examines the effects of audiovisual streaming in the global South, offering a rare vantage point from which to examine the global streaming revolution, which tends to be studied typically with reference to the North. Netflix has become synonymous with the world of streaming, though, in recent years, other streaming giants have emerged in the global North–mostly notably, Amazon and Disney+–that compete tightly within international markets. And yet, despite the vital importance of developing economies of the South as expanding markets, much scholarship on the streaming of film and television frames these economies simply as sites that are dependent on a one-way flow of technology and infrastructure from the North to the South. This volume focuses on the mutual exchange of creative labor and cultural capital between the North and South to provide a textured analysis of the obscured realities of audiovisual streaming within, as well as across, the vast economies of the global South. Exploring an array of genres including feature-length fiction films, art cinema, documentary, and television series–the essays in this volume illuminate the shifting media environments of relatively understudied contexts such as Brazil, Egypt, India, Lebanon, Philippines, and South Korea. The volume argues that the complexities of the global streaming landscape impel us to move beyond a simplistic theory of Western cultural imperialism imposed on the non-Western world and creates an intricate picture of contemporary media globalization, while reflecting on the changing cultural and political equation between the global North and South.

Keywords: Streaming, Platforms, Lebanon, A Tale of Business, Politics