Adapting his MA Thesis supervised by Dr. Marc Steinberg, Colin Crawford has recently published "Netflix's Speculative Fictions: Financializing Platform Television" through Lexington Books. The monograph examines how the company's scaled expansion has hinged upon its ability not only to create, but more importantly to communicate, new forms and flows of potential value in platform capitalism, as capital is mobilized not only from direct revenue streams but also the new value assigned to inputs and investments of data, debt, attention, behavior, taste, time, sociality, and speculation. Critically interpreting these communications and projections of value, Crawford performs a discursive analysis of the platform television industry leader Netflix and its ‘investor lore’: the multi-sited narratives of value found in the company’s investor relations materials and corporate communications, such as letters to shareholders, financial earnings reports, executive interviews, press releases, and blog posts. Netflix best represents the increasingly ubiquitous nexus of culture, tech, and finance industries that is platform television. To better understand and critique the emergent financial logics of this relatively new media industry, the book argues that we must first understand the speculative narratives and discourses of value that organize it.
Colin is currently in his first year of Concordia's Film and Moving Image Studies PhD program, where his research continues to examine the discourses and temporalities of value driving the expanding platform television industry. His work pays particular attention to the relationship between datafication and financialization in media industries, infrastructures, and cultures.