The rise of streaming culture: SVOD media and the digital revolution in India

ABSTRACT

The article analyses the reasons and the effects of the rise of digital platforms in India, specifically focusing on SVOD platforms. The proliferation of various digital video platforms of different types has been tremendous both in India and the world since early years of 21^st century. Taking into consideration the fact that digitality in India is a recent phenomenon, the article, by drawing upon some of the most significant theories in new media studies analyzes the questions of remediation and mediatization in the context of streaming culture in India by taking an example of an emergent media form – web series. The article also takes into consideration the impact of infrastructural development of streaming culture in India, and looks at several examples illustrating digital revolution in India – the remediation of television and the regulation of SVOD content as an example of entanglement of media and society.

KEYWORDS:

• SVOD
• digital culture
• web series
• India
• remediation
• streaming

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Majority of SVOD markets in the world are dominated by Netflix, although local SVOD platforms do exist – BritBox in North America and the UK, Viaplay in the Scandinavian countries, Claro Video in Latin America, etc. Netflix is, at the time of writing, banned in China, North Korea, Syria and Crimea, a territory in Ukraine that has been annexed by Russia in 2014.

2. A multitude of TV series focusing on the relationship between mothers-in-law and daughters-in-law.

3. Demonetization refers to the withdrawal of 500 and 1000 Rupee notes and introduction of new 500 and 2000 notes announced by the Indian government on 8 November 2016. As most financial transactions in India were happening in cash and these notes were very commonly used, such move without any prior warning caused a lot of panic in the country.

4. Some of the biggest Bollywood films of 2020, like Gunjan Saxena: The Kargil Girl (Sharan Sharma, 2020; Netflix), Shakuntala Devi (Anu Menon, 2020; Amazon Prime Video), Gulabo Sitabo (Shoojit Sircar, 2020; Amazon Prime Video), among others, were released on SVOD platforms instead of theatres.

5. The signatories are: Netflix, Zee 5, Viacom 18, AltBalaji, Eros Now, Hotstar, Sony, Jio and Arre.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Šarūnas Paunksnis

Šarūnas Paunksnis teaches at the Faculty of Social Sciences, Arts and Humanities, Kaunas University of Technology in Kaunas, Lithuania. His main research areas include but are not limited to media theory, Indian cinema, postcolonial theory, globalization, cultural theory and digital humanities. He is an author of Dark Fear, Eerie Cities: New Hindi Cinema in Neoliberal India (Oxford University Press, 2019) and a co-editor (with Runa Chakraborty Paunksnis) of Gender, Cinema, Streaming Platforms: Shifting Frames in Neoliberal India (Palgrave Macmillan, 2023).