Unraveling Structured Routine: An Exploration of Audiences’ Habits in the Post-Network Age

Abstract

Over the past decades, audience researchers have strived to investigate the impact of traditional and emerging factors on audiences’ television viewing behaviors. With the popularity of streaming services, the way people consume and discuss media content has been fundamentally transformed. However, academic understanding of the extent to which habits impact people’s practices of viewing streamed content remains limited. By employing a mixed-methods approach that combines data collected via in-depth interviews and browser extensions from a group of Netflix users in the United States, this study found that participants’ viewing habits determine not only when they watch but also how and what they watch. Furthermore, despite having almost unlimited viewing options, many participants still tended to watch programs that they were familiar with or had watched before. The findings highlighted that, even in today’s fragmented media environment, participants’ streaming viewing practices were repetitive and deeply embedded in the structured routines of their daily lives.