The article examines the brand positioning strategy of Netflix in Poland within the broader context of global discourses of diversity and inclusivity. It is grounded in the assumption that the streaming platform has consistently constructed its image as a brand representing liberal values, deploying them both in its corporate communication and in local production and marketing practices. The article seeks to explore how Netflix’s global branding strategy has been adapted to the Polish socio-cultural context. The analysis demonstrates that during the first years of its presence on the Polish market, Netflix effectively used the discourse of diversity as a tool for distinguishing itself from the country’s conservative media and political landscape. The platform positioned itself as a modern, progressive, and socially engaged media actor capable of addressing topics marginalized by traditional broadcasters. At the same time, the author argues that inclusivity functioned primarily as an instrumental element of Netflix’s branding strategy, serving the accumulation of symbolic brand capital. Alongside demographic changes within streaming audiences and the growing popularity of conservative attitudes among younger viewers, the liberal discourse of diversity gradually began to lose its market effectiveness. As a result, Netflix increasingly shifted its communication and programming strategies toward more universal, folk-oriented, and emotionally safe narratives.
This paper introduces micro-short audiovisual forms—very brief videos ranging from a few seconds to several minutes, commonly distributed via TikTok, Instagram or other social media. These forms are defined not only by duration but by distinct formal and narrative qualities shaped by mobile viewing habits and platform algorithms. Integrating concepts from film and media studies, the analysis draws on classical narratology (e.g., plot, character, presented world) and postclassical approaches, including cognitive and transmedial narratology. A five-part typology is proposed: Nomads (standalone units), Chains (linear sequences), Mosaics (nonlinear thematic clusters), Excerpts (remixes), and Satellites (paratextual extensions). Micro-shorts are presented as narratively connected elements within broader media ecosystems, redefining modes of storytelling and engagement in the digital economy of attention.
This article contributes to both academic understanding of film literacy pedagogy and practical guidance for cultural institutions implementing streaming-based educational initiatives. By examining how European Commission audience development mandates translate into institutional practice, the article illuminates the mechanisms through which cultural policy frameworks shape educational outcomes. Simultaneously, by analysing concrete case studies of successful implementations, it provides actionable insights for film educators, cultural administrators, and policymakers regarding how streaming technologies can be purposefully repurposed toward film literacy objectives rather than accepting them as threats to educational missions.
This article examines personalization as a central mechanism in Netflix’s operation, in terms of user interface, branding strategy, and algorithmic content management. Tracing the platform’s historical development and the transformation of the media dispositif, the author argues that personalization has served as Netflix’s core identity marker from the outset, with the brand being built not around content but around a technologically enhanced user experience. The text explores how recommendation systems, microgenres, taste clusters, and algorithmic identities shape a complex structure of classification and reception. Personalization is understood here as a dynamic, multi-layered process embedded in a capitalist logic of datafication, which simultaneously offers users the illusion of autonomy and subjects them to a regime of prediction and engagement optimization. The analysis also addresses the influence of personalization on the production of Netflix Originals, aesthetic homogenization, and the redefinition of genre categories. The article ultimately raises the question of whether personalization functions as a genuine user tool—or as a myth inscribed in the platform’s strategic narrative.
The article seeks to answer the following question: To what extent is it possible to philosophize about the media through media images? This problem is analysed using the example of selected episodes of the anthological series Black Mirror. The author contrasts the theoretical insights of 20th- and 21st-century philosophers (Baudrillard, Flusser, Sloterdijk, Adorno, Horkheimer, Žižek) with examples of their pictorial implementation in Black Mirror episodes. The text explores two themes: the problem of appropriation of reality by the media, and issues related to the mechanisms of mass culture and possible ways to criticize them.
This paper analyses the strategy of streaming platforms in terms of interactive content–from interactive films to video games. The study covers the years 2017–2025 and focuses on the changing strategy of the Netflix platform regarding new forms of interactive entertainment over the years. The first part outlines a detailed history of this segment based on the most important media reports, which gives a coherent overview of the evolving strategy. The second part of the article presents findings from a detailed analysis of the video games library available to Polish subscribers. These results confirm the initial thesis: after the period of experimenting with interactive content in the years 2017-2024, since mid-2024, Netflix has shifted its focus to producing widely available content for the whole family.
The text analyzes Natalia Brzozowska’s film Kopalnia/The Coal Mine (1947). The fate of the director is inextricably linked to her film: her greatest artistic achievement became the source of her drama. The author herself was entered into the group of (Un)forgettable documentary filmmakers, although this happened relatively recently. Brzozowska’s documentary was a highly original statement, drawing on and developing the best traditions of cinema, telling stories through images and using sound in a creative way. The reference points for this film are classic documentaries from the turn of the 1920s and 1930s, primarily Salt for Svanetia by Mikhail Kalatozov and Coal Face by Alberto Cavalcanti. On the other hand, the film fits into the Silesian cultural tradition. I contest the thesis that Brzozowska’s film belongs to works enclosed in the aesthetics of socialist realism.
The article examines the contemporary streaming market from a geopolitical, economic, and technological perspective, portraying it as a battleground for cultural power and infrastructural dominance. Drawing on Immanuel Wallerstein’s world-systems theory, the author argues that digital audiovisual distribution not only reproduces but also intensifies the existing centre—periphery hierarchies through the technofeudal logic of platforms. The article explores four key tensions: internal competition among streaming services, the clash between traditional media industries and tech giants, the algorithmization of cultural access, and the geopolitical rivalry between the US and China. The author contends that the digital revolution in media distribution has not led to democratization, but instead has reinforced an oligopolistic system of control based on data, infrastructure, and algorithmic power.
This article examines the contemporary TV series as a cultural form central to platform capitalism in general and to streaming services in particular. It argues that the aesthetic complexity of many key series—manifested in narrative composition, visual spectacle, and bingeable segmentation—is tightly bound to algorithmic control platforms aim to exercise, transforming viewer engagement into cognitive labour. Analysing the aesthetic foundations of binge-watching, as well as the logic of the recommendation systems that generates it, the article shows how aesthetic complexity conceals the commodification of attention, taste, and identity. Serial narratives become instruments of ideological control, turning interpretive effort into productive apathy. Drawing on Horkheimer and Adorno, as well as contemporary TV series criticism, the article frames the TV series as a spectacle of control characteristic of many trends in digital capitalism.
In the late 1980s, Sarah Kozloff’s Invisible Storyteller: Voice-over Narration in American Fiction Film (1988) emerged as foundational work in the field of film studies. To date, the book remains virtually the sole monograph dedicated to the study of voice-over narration in film. Subsequently, there has been a paucity of scholarly articles examining this subject, particularly from a theoretical perspective. As a result, the inquiries presented by the British researcher over thirty years ago merit a revisit. The article seeks to investigate the evolution and application of voice-over in premium series available on streaming platforms. Its objective is to demonstrate that this narrative device has experienced a remarkable resurgence. In the era of so-called ‘complex TV,’ voice-over is increasingly employed in diverse and unconventional manners. As with other storytelling elements, it proves instrumental in fostering ambiguous interactions between the character and the depicted world. Furthermore, it possesses significant potential to influence the dramaturgical dynamics of a narrative, as evidenced by the examples of quality series such as Mr. Robot, Fleabag, or 13 Reasons Why.
The landscape of Polish art from that period, dominated by the Stalinist doctrine of Socialist Realism (socrealism), merits a scholarly reexamination today. A peculiar paradox of past research lies in the fact that (with few exceptions) it generally continues to reflect the perspective of its contemporary promoters and overseers. Did the omnipresent ideological shadow of the doctrine of socrealism truly fall over the entire territory of visual art of that time? This article uncovers a series of little-known paintings by various artists, representing an artistic alternative in Polish painting from 1949 to 1955—a period of virtually absolute socrealism dominance in culture and art.
This study explores an overlooked issue in research, namely the impact of Netflix’s presence on the feature animation market, which is saturated with big studios such as Disney, DreamWorks, and Illumination. From a streaming service that initially licensed content, animated and not from external studios, Netflix eventually recognized animation as a new avenue for growth. In 2019 it released its first original animated feature and has grown into a full-fledged player in the animated film industry. Netflix’s non-traditional approach to distribution disrupted the order of Hollywood’s lucrative sector. This article aims to define Netflix’s approach to development its original animated content, the transformations it has inspired in the mainstream feature animation market and to highlight its groundbreaking practices in animated film production, such as creator-driven projects, artistic freedom, commitment to inclusivity, and stylistic diversity.
The article examines the transformations in distribution models prompted by the rise of streaming platforms. It identifies three new models that have emerged in the post-2020 market landscape in response to the expansion of streaming: the production (corporate) model, the production-executive (streaming) model, and the hybrid model, all of which coexist with the redefined traditional model 2.0. These models represent attempts to balance the interests of theatrical exhibitors and distributors, and those of streaming platforms, reflecting a broader recalibration of business strategies in light of shifting industry dynamics. The second part of the article investigates how the models identified between 2020 and 2022 have evolved in the market context since 2022. Several adjustments observed during this period collectively suggest a partial reversion to pre-pandemic distribution relations, a trend the article considers to be a ‘counter-reformation’. Nevertheless, the conclusions underscore that this movement does not negate the transformative impact of the streaming-driven ‘reformation’ of the theatrical distribution landscape.
Since the onset of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, streaming video has emerged as both a cultural lifeline and a battleground for soft power. Utilizing data from a nationally weighted CAWI survey conducted in March–April 2024 (N = 1,167) and six interviews, this article examines the co-evolution of global Netflix and Ukrainian platforms Megogo and Sweet.TV under the pressures of wartime. The weekly reach of domestic streaming services increased from 46% prior to the war to 68%, primarily driven by the availability of Ukrainian-language content and a newly validated Patriotic Streaming Preference Scale (α = 0.88), where a one-standard-deviation increase nearly doubles the likelihood of adopting a local service. Factors such as exclusive sports content, rapid dubbing cycles, and telecom bundling further stabilize the domestic market share, while Netflix reduces subscriber churn by “speaking Ukrainian”: simultaneously dubbed originals remain in the platform’s national top 10 list 38% longer than titles with only subtitles. Meanwhile, piracy decreased by fifteen percentage points as viewers transitioned to legal, local-language catalogues. These findings position Ukraine as a live case study of crisis-accelerated media glocalization and a model for post-war cultural policy.
This article analyzes El Lissitzky's illustration that appeared in Ilya Ehrenburg's eponymous short story in the ironically titled Russian book Shest' povestey o legkikh kontsakh (Six Stories with Easy Endings, 1922). The story, the illustration, and contemporary Expressionist avant-garde Yiddish poetry, allfrom the same year, appeared in the immediate aftermath of the pogrom wave that swept across the ravagedformer Pale of Settlement between 1917 and 1921 (primarily in Ukraine) during the Russian Revolution, the civil war, and the Soviet-Polish war of 1919-1922. Over one hundred thousand Jews were slaughtered; hundreds of thousands more were displaced from their homes; and still others were tortured, raped, and humiliated. Whereas the story is a memorial to a major center of Jewish life, Berdichev, the illustration is Lissitzky's ode to the idea of Jewish art. Shifs-karte was his visual statement of despair based on what he saw as the end of the f"olk" upon which Jewish art depended. Not all writers and artists agreed with Lissitzky; on the contrary, they envisaged a national cultural renaissance that politically and culturally rivaled Zionism. This article serves as the background for a detailed interpretation of the illustration. The irony of Lissitzky's turn to abstraction as a means of "transcending" his hitherto powerful Jewish identity is that it provided the basis for a critical view that interprets his "Prouns"- the epitome of abstract art-as his secret, kabbalistic adherence to the commandment prohibiting realism or the literal representation of images.
Israeli bumper stickers and their relatedfolk creativity are the subject of an ongoing analytical study. The stickers, typically organized into clusters, constitute a range of various discourses expressing key social and cultural processes and debates. In recent years, a one-word sticker- (sic) (veahavta, "You shall love")-has emerged to become a noteworthy cultural icon. The present article provides an intimate, in-depth account of the creation, dissemination, and impact of the (sic)bumper sticker. Standing alone with its original nikkud ("vocalization marks") and teamim ("cantillation marks"), (sic) has now become a potent, inspiring focus of ever-expanding meanings. From a documented act of creation, a spontaneous reaction to local conflict in one kibbutz, (sic) has acquired iconic status for many Israelis, who distribute it with enthusiasm and devotion, attributing to the word both particular and universal qualities. This article tells the detailed story of the emergence of (sic) and follows the pathways along which it has gained iconic status never before achieved by a Hebrew-language sticker, reaching locations far beyond Hebrew-speaking communities. This new phenomenon is documented and interpreted by means of a series of interviews carried out primarily with individuals who have contributed to (sic) creation and dissemination.
This article explores the extensive illustrations of the life of the Patriarch Joseph in a handsome Greek book, the "McKell Manuscript" (Walters Art Museum TL.2022.13.1), created in the later sixteenth century in the Romanian principality of Wallachia by Luke the Cypriot. The manuscript comprises two apocryphal biblical texts: the Life of Joseph attributed to Saint Ephraem the Syrian (d. 373) and the anonymous Romance of Joseph and Aseneth, which likely originated in the Hellenized Jewish community of Egypt between 200 BCE and 200 CE. The former is a storybook retelling of the life of the Patriarch Joseph up to his dramatic reunion with his father, Jacob (Gen 37-46), embellished with events and characters drawn from Jewish legends, while the latter is a thoroughly fanciful account ofJoseph's marriage to Aseneth, the daughter of the Priest of Heliopolis (Gen 41:45), who converts to Judaism. The questions explored are: when was this two-part Joseph story first illustrated, and what visual models (if any) did that first illustrator draw upon? And, most important, is this book revealing of the art of Jews in late antiquity?
