Datacasting. L’esperienza del flusso algoritmico nell’ecosistema delle streaming platform e in TikTok

This article advances the idea of a new paradigm shift – from personcasting to datacasting – when thinking about the experience of watching audiovisual content both on streaming platforms and media sharing platforms. We consider the platformisation of television to look at the way in which user agency changes within an increasingly datafied media ecosystem. The main focus is on TikTok as it is the platform that best exemplifies the passage from an on-demand flow of content (YouTube, Netflix) to an entirely algorithmic flow. We introduce two main themes that emerge from the analysis of 20 qualitative interviews: TV on TikTok and TikTok as TV in order to fully understand how users watch content on the platform, as well as the impact the automated flow has on the level of entertainment given by the app.