Netflix, Imagined Affordances, and the Illusion of Control

In our everyday interactions with technology, we are often told that we are “in control.” For example, Twitter’s TOS (Terms of Service) assure us we can control the distribution of our content through our account settings. Facebook’s FAQs likewise explain how we can easily control the content we see in News Feed by adjusting our preferences. In both examples, “control” as a term connotes actual as well as perceived agency, which can be exercised in relation to these platforms through application settings, choices, and actions available to us. However, the outcomes of these actions are influenced by many other mediating factors. At the surface, the distance between perceived and actual agency might tell us something about how platforms such as Netflix obscure or make invisible the actual decisions being made on behalf of users. Moving to a deeper level of analysis, we can explore what critical organizational theorists Deetz (1992) and Mumby (1988) would call “deep structures” of meaning, where various threads from the software, machine learning, and stakeholder decisions weave patterns that build and reify particular meanings around the agential interaction between user and interface in ways that are not easily (if at all) untangled. The purpose of this chapter is to explore the infrastructure and affordances of the Netflix platform through the lens of control. As a case study, it helps us build a strong argument for the importance of operationalizing the concept of control when using it as a term to describe or explain the relationship between micro elements of technical systems or between users and digital media platforms. We argue that focusing directly on and using the lens of control can enhance the way we make sense of complex interaction processes between multiple actors, both human and nonhuman.