Streaming Affordances in Small Media Markets

Project Description

This (living lab) research aims to gain fundamental insights into user behavior of streaming consumers, in order to strengthen the offer, positioning, visibility and findability and experience of Flemish streaming platform, and thus also to sustain the position of Flemish players within a small, fragile and competitive audiovisual ecosystem. In doing so, we are building an experimentation environment with Flemish media companies and researchers with the aim of conducting and validating (collaborative) innovation experiments around improving the findability and visibility of Flemish streaming video services.

The objectives of the research are:

• To gain insights around (non-)streaming usage in Flanders and the factors that influence this.
• To develop a suitable measuring methodology to map, understand and explain streaming-use
• Develop and set up a living lab environment to identify, understand and explain the use and perception of (Flemish) streaming behavior
• Map, understand, explain streaming behavior in small market context
• Cooperate and exchange information with actors within the Flemish streaming media ecosystem

The living lab addresses four crucial gaps within the research on user behavior of streaming consumers:

• the limited insights the choices users make within consuming those different devices;
• from the point of view of media players, how users combine this behavior with other streaming habits on other platforms, and especially how those users react to interventions within the offer and positioning;
• the limited research on streaming affordances in a small-market context, where players also have limited resources to cater to certain affordances;
• the limited availability of data by international players on consumption of their offerings.