Chapter 9 Binge-Watching Audience Typologies: Conclusion

Résumé En

Binge-watching was a relatively obscure phenomenon before 2012. Although practised and discussed in niche circles since before the advent of DVDs, it was not until streaming services and broadband internet became more and more ubiquitous that binge-watching received increased media and academic attention. Between 2015 and 2020, researchers have asked many questions about binge-watchers, including why they watch, what motivates them, how engaged they are (or not), and what outcomes they report after the bingewatching experience. Scholars exploring these questions have found a range of motives, a variety of experiences, a spectrum of engagement, and positively and negatively valenced binge-watching outcomes-some of which are dependent on one another. Why a person binge-watches is strongly tied to what they hope to get out of the experience. What they actually get out of it is tied to what they watch and how they watch it (Castro et al. 2021; Steiner 2017). Our audience part of this book has uncovered additional patterns and structures of binge-watching. To round off the part, we use this chapter to describe audience typologies that shed some light on the why, where, when, with whom, how, and to what end of binge-watching. m o t i v e s Steiner and Xu (2020) found the following binge-watching motives: 'catching up, relaxation, sense of completion, cultural inclusion, and improved viewing experience' (90). These aligned with finding by Perks (2015), Pittman and Sheehan (2015), and later Panda and Pandey (2017). While some motives, such ...