Copyright by Latina Sabinova Vidolova 2020

The Thesis Committee for Latina Sabinova Vidolova Certifies that this is the approved version of the following Thesis:

To All the Audiences I’ve Tweeted to Before: Netflix, Teen Girls, and Social Media Marketing

APPROVED BY SUPERVISING COMMITTEE:

Alisa Perren, Supervisor

Suzanne Scott

To All the Audiences I’ve Tweeted to Before: Netflix, Teen Girls, and Social Media Marketing

by

Latina Sabinova Vidolova

Thesis Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of The University of Texas at Austin in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements

for the Degree of

Master of Arts

The University of Texas at Austin August 2020

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank my committee members, Alisa Perren and Suzanne Scott, for offering their time and input on this project. They have oriented me toward generative questions, propelled my analysis, and set me on scholarly trajectories that will inform my work in years to come.

iv Abstract

To All the Audiences I’ve Tweeted to Before: Netflix, Teen Girls, and Social Media Marketing

Latina Sabinova Vidolova, MA

The University of Texas at Austin, 2020

Supervisor: Alisa Perren

In the late 2010s, Netflix assembled a significant collection of teen-centric media on its service, which it extensively promoted on Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube. This thesis examines Netflix’s relationship with teen audiences as framed in the social media marketing materials for 13 Reasons Why (2017–2020) and To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before (2018), as well as in the service’s intra-industrial communication and engagements with press from 2016 to 2020. Illustrating how Netflix echoed The CW and Freeform’s earlier pursuit of teen viewers, this study highlights the continuities in marketing strategies between emergent streaming services and legacy niche networks. On social media accounts dedicated to targeting young women, Netflix focused on fashion and beauty, boys, and female role models. The teen femininities Netflix promoted most heavily were straight, white, and thin. On other accounts, Netflix’s marketing efforts centered parents or older women instead of teens as key viewers of its teen shows and movies. The different modes of address Netflix cultivated point to social media services as valuable sites through which to examine how Netflix constructs audience segments. v Furthermore, Netflix’s social media strategies marked a shift in brand promotion from selling a lifestyle to addressing audiences as a friend.

vi Table of Contents

List of Tables ...... ix

List of Figures ...... x

Introduction ...... 12

Literature Review...... 21

Methodological approach...... 27

Chapter Overview ...... 31

Chapter 1: Family-Friendly and Edgy-Taboo: Attracting “Teen” Audiences ...... 35

From Mass to Niche to Individual ...... 37

The WB’s Teen Sensibility and Lifestyle Channel Branding in the ‘90s .....41

“Mind-Blowingly Inappropriate”: The “CW Woman” and TV to Tweet About...... 45

Collaborators and Participants: How The CW Drew in Audiences on Social Media ...... 47

CW Femininity and Channeling Fan Activity ...... 51

The Freeform Girl: Branding ABC Family and Freeform ...... 53

ABC Family’s Millennials and Freeform’s Becomers: Defining an Audience ...... 54

Speaking as Their Friend: Freeform’s Social Media Strategies ...... 57

Attaining Perfect Looks: Diversity, Women, and the ABC Family/Freeform Brand ...... 60

Conclusion ...... 62

Chapter 2: “Phenomenal” Social Media Activity: Netflix Messaging Around Teen Programming...... 64

“There’s no such thing as a ‘Netflix show’”: A Streaming Service for Everyone ...... 68 vii “Shows that Families can Enjoy Together”: How Netflix Characterizes Teen Programming and its Audiences to Press...... 77

Inspire and Empower Young Women: Netflix Press Releases for Teen Content ...... 83

Piercing the Cultural Zeitgeist ...... 88

Conclusion ...... 97

Chapter 3: Helping Parents and Befriending Teens: Marketing 13 Reasons Why ...... 99

Preliminary Promotion of 13 Reasons Why via Social Media ...... 100

A Netflix Guide to Connecting with your Children: Targeting Parents .....104

Instagram Stalking and Tumblr Style: Emulating Teen Lifestyles and Practices ...... 112

13 Reasons Why You Matter to Us: Targeting Teens ...... 116

Conclusion ...... 125

Chapter 4: Romcoms, Hot Boys, and Strong Female Leads: Marketing To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before to Teens and Adults ...... 128

Romcoms are the supreme genre? @netflixfilm’s promotion of To All the Boys ...... 133

If you like '90s romcoms…: @netflix Twitter promotion of To All the Boys ...... 140

Charm Battles, Crossovers, and Glam Aesthetics: @netflix Instagram and YouTube Promotion of To All the Boys ...... 150

Conclusion ...... 160

Conclusion: Deconstructing Netflix’s Personalization Rhetoric and Clearing the Ground for Future Work ...... 164

Works Cited ...... 172

viii List of Tables

Table 1: Netflix Social Media Accounts Related to Demographics, Geographic

Region (December 2019) ...... 16

Table 2: Netflix Social Media Accounts Related to Demographics, Other

(December 2019) ...... 17

Table 3: Netflix Taste-Related Social Media Accounts (December 2019) ...... 17

Table 4: Other Netflix Social Media Accounts (December 2019) ...... 18

ix List of Figures

Figure 0.1: A Twitter thread from August 2018. (Netflix US 2018p) ...... 12

Figure 0.2: A Twitter user expresses skepticism of Netflix’s use of personal address. Netflix humorously reiterates their direct address with a movie reference to 1999’s Notting Hill. This exchange demonstrates several major strategies Netflix uses to relate to subscribers on social media. (Netflix

US 2018x) ...... 20

Figure 1.1: The CW’s Social Directory page during the TV Now campaign.

(Author’s screenshot from retired CW website page.) ...... 50

Figure 2.1: Graphic of Google trends from Netflix shareholder letter, “evidence” of

13 Reasons and Stranger Things’ popular appeal. (Netflix 2017b)...... 91

Figure 2.2: Graphic from Netflix shareholder letter showing “explosive growth” in

Instagram followings of Netflix stars. (Netflix 2018e) ...... 94

Figure 2.3: Graphic from Netflix shareholder letter claiming actors in teen-targeted

series Élite have all become stars. (Netflix 2019a) ...... 95

Figure 3.1: Selena Gomez Instagram post on left and @netflix Twitter post on right of first teaser trailer for 13 Reasons Why. (Gomez 2017; Netflix US

2017a) ...... 101

Figure 3.2: On the left: Netflix infographic recommending shows for parents to watch to connect with teens. On the right: Netflix infographic based on

Zeno Group survey, finding that watching the same shows gives parents a way to bond with children. Notably, 13 Reasons is visually highlighted

in both graphics. (Dave, I Love My Kids Blog 2017) ...... 111

x Figure 3.3: Comparison of official Tumblr image on left and fan-created Tumblr edit on right. Both use a muted palate, a rip effect, and text to reflect on

a character from the show. (13reasonswhy on Tumblr 2017; meljtr 2017) 115

Figure 3.4: Side-by-side of a Netflix-created gifset on Twitter and fan-created gifset on Tumblr of the same scene between main characters Hannah and Clay.

(13 Reasons Why 2017d; ravenclairee 2017) ...... 118

Figure 4.1: Summary of social media profiles considered in this chapter and their

main marketing orientation...... 131

Figure 4.2: A tweet from @netflix. Meme of two brawny arms grasping hands shows the rallying together of emotional teens and adults who “should know better” around Noah Centineo. This tweet captures the

combination of audiences @netflix on Twitter appealed to...... 142

Figure 4.3: In the weeks following To All the Boys’s release, @netflix focused almost all of its attention on the movie and on its male lead. (Netflix US

2018m) ...... 146

Figure 4.4: To All the Boys posts tagged #GlamstheticSeries on Instagram. (Netflix

US on IG 2018h) ...... 155

Figure 4.5: This post on @netflix Instagram, featuring a collection of shirtless photos of Riverdale actor KJ Apa, demonstrates how the account pulled images from multiple actors’ social media accounts. (Netflix US on IG

2018l) ...... 156

Figure 5.1: Netflix’s social media use as audience management. (Netflix US 2018) ...169

xi Introduction

Figure 0.1: A Twitter thread from August 2018. (Netflix US 2018p)

The above Twitter conversation unfolded as follows: Netflix posted photographs of the lead actors from Netflix original film To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before (2018) and claimed to want to frame them in “their” home. Though any media corporation might distribute promotional photographs, the personal touch Netflix added to the tweet’s text—as if the corporation itself were attached to the movie and its stars—prompted a 12 Twitter user to ask to “be best friends with” the Netflix Twitter account. To this, the account agreed swiftly with a gif reply proclaiming them to be best friends. This sort of interaction occurs frequently on Netflix’s Twitter account, where the corporation builds rapport with audiences via personal address and based on a mutual enjoyment of Netflix media. For this rapport to work, Netflix posts on social media as if the company is just another person on the Internet, relating to social media users as equals. In other words, on social media, Netflix strives to seem like someone you can be friends with, or someone just like you.

This thesis begins with the assertion that the social media posts deriving from

Netflix have something important to say about whom the media provider imagines to be

“their” audience member. Scholarly work on Netflix and its audiences has centered on the Netflix platform itself or largely treated Netflix’s digital service, promotion, and communications arms as uniform. However, an investigation of Netflix’s audience strategies suggested via promotion, for example, reveals disjunctions with those indicated on the platform. While the digital service addresses users as individuals, Netflix promotion on social media creates silos for like audiences, based on apparent assumptions about demographics and taste. Lack of attention to this social media activity alongside the academic preoccupation with the digital Netflix platform has obscured continuities between the practices of Netflix and linear channels when it comes to audience segmentation.

In this regard, Netflix’s engagement with teen girls is particularly significant to consider because of the way the company itself extensively targets these audiences on 13 Instagram, YouTube, and Tumblr. Moreover, admissions from the company about earnings and viewership indicate teens have been a critical money-making group. Yet

Netflix denies it targets teens in public communications. Examining Netflix’s relationship with teen audiences as displayed across social media platforms allows this project to unpack why the contradictions between the service’s messaging and actions occur and to illuminate how much audience targeting has stayed the same in moving from legacy television to emergent streaming models.

Further, Netflix’s denials that it targets teens have concealed critical insights into how Netflix social media accounts construct a feminine teen subject. A decreasing number of scholarly studies since the 2000s have addressed feminized pop culture

(Levine 2015), leading to the need for a renewed investigation of how teen girls are marketed to, especially in digital spaces. This thesis breaks down the composite parts of the “Netflix teen” produced through promotional materials, highlights the relationship of this imagined teen to television’s past strategies of hailing teens, and explores how the positioning of the Netflix teen operates in relation to broader ideologies of postfeminism and popular feminism.

Netflix’s teen programs have not been studied as a cohesive unit thus far, I believe in part because, unlike a teen-oriented television network like The CW or

Freeform, which explicitly focus on targeting young women as their main demographic,

Netflix does not appear to address any audience in particular. Instead, Netflix portrays itself as aspiring to provide something for everyone to watch. With a platform that makes algorithmically defined recommendations based on individual viewers’ histories, Netflix 14 publicly claims to reject demographic indicators like age and gender—categories long used both by broadcast and cable networks to cultivate desired audiences (Barrett 2016).

However, to better promote related types of content and to attract audience subgroups, Netflix has created multiple social media accounts across diverse platforms.

For instance, through the @NXonNetflix and @strongblackleads accounts on Twitter,

Netflix regularly curates a selection of its content to geek and black audiences respectively. While the majority of Netflix social media accounts demarcate geographic regions (e.g. specific countries like Brazil, @NetflixBrasil, or sociopolitical zones like

Latin America, @NetflixLAT), there are a handful of accounts related to race, sexuality, age group, or family status (see tables 1 and 2). Netflix also has social media accounts for taste-related categories such as genre and specific hobbies and interests (e.g. sci-fi & fantasy, or cooking and eating; see table 3). The taste-related social media accounts, like the demographic-based accounts, rely on assumptions about the identity characteristics of the distinct audience they target. For example, following the release of To All the Boys,

Twitter account @netflix gushed about how lead actor Noah Centineo would be your next internet crush. Meanwhile, Twitter account @netflixfilm shared an interview with

Jenny Han, author of the book To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before, discussing the adaptation of her work into a movie (Netflix US 2018i; Netflix Film 2018r). While the more general Netflix account chose an emotional language associated with young women, the Netflix film account examined how the movie was made, suggesting a more critical engagement associated with older audiences.

15 Table 1: Netflix Social Media Accounts Related to Demographics, Geographic region (December 2019)

Twitter Instagram YouTube following following following @netflix (called @NewOnNetflix on *US YouTube) 6.94 M 19.3 M 11.9 M @NetflixBrasil / Brazil @NetflixBRA 7.57 M 15.2 M 5.78 M Latin America @NetflixLAT 2.59 M 8 M 5.28 M @NetflixFR / France @NetflixFrance 2.27 M 3.4 M 611 K Italy @NetflixIT 428 K 2.9 M 769 K Spain @NetflixES 961 K 2.3 M 653 K @NetflixIndia / India @Netflix_IN 379 K 1.7 M 5.29 M Germany, Austria, Switzerland @NetflixDE / @netflixdach 765 K 1.2 M 633 K Middle East and North Africa @NetflixMENA 616 K 1.1 M 401 K UK and Ireland @NetflixUK 694 K 1 M 579 K Portugal @NetflixPT 127 K 282 K 469 K Netherlands, @NetflixNL / Belgium @netflixbenelux 124 K 324 K 67.2 K Australia and New Zealand @NetflixANZ 84.2 K 225 K --- Nordic Countries @NetflixNordic(s) 50.2 K 120 K 76.1 K Japan @NetflixJP 241 K 86.7 K 428 K *main account This chart omits most individual country accounts for brevity, but includes those individual country accounts shown on Netflix's YouTube featured channels page, as indicative of channels Netflix itself might prioritize. Sorted in descending order based on Instagram subscriptions, which is often the biggest category, though note exceptions such as India and Japan.

16 Table 2: Netflix Social Media Accounts Related to Demographics, Other (December

Twitter Instagram following following YouTube following (Strong Black Lead, Strong Black Black Laughs playlists on Americans @strongblacklead 111 K 344 K @netflix) LGBTQ The Most @Most 36.8 K 83.6 K --- Parents Netflix Family (Moms) @netflixfamily 14.4 K 367 K --- Netflix Futures Tweens @netflixfamily ------1.3 M Kids Netflix Jr. ------2.88 M 2019)

Table 3: Netflix Taste-Related Social Media Accounts (December 2019)

Twitter Instagram YouTube following following following Geek content (“super[heroes], sci-fi, (NX playlists gaming, fantasy, anime”) @NXOnNetflix 151 K 233 K on @netflix) Comedy, stand-up @NetflixIsAJoke 177 K 1 M 539 K (Food playlists Cooking, food @NetflixFood 11.1 K 111 K on @netflix) Netflix Film Club Movies @NetflixFilm 212 K 1.1 M 22.6 K Korean Dramas @TheSwoon ------291 K

17 Table 4: Other Netflix Social Media Accounts (December 2019)

Twitter Instagram YouTube following following following General news about new releases @seewhatsnext 266 K ------News for media professionals @NetflixQueue 3.3 K 19.9 K --- Netflix employees @WeAreNetflix 22.2 K 29.4 K 18.6 K Not including accounts for specific shows and movies.

Thus, in spite of rhetoric to the contrary, via social platforms such as Twitter,

Instagram, and YouTube, Netflix relies on cultural assumptions about demographic categories as it publicly engages with audiences. The nature of these assumptions require analysis especially when it comes to teens. Despite the maturation of a collection of teen- centric media on the service, Netflix’s role in producing, distributing, and marketing teen media has yet to receive significant scholarly attention. Since its first productions in

2012, Netflix has expanded its original offerings substantially and some of these originals—shows like 13 Reasons Why (2017–), End of the F---ing World (2017–2019), and Elite (2018–), as well as movies like The Kissing Booth (2018) and To All the Boys

(2018)—feature teens and explicitly target teen audiences. Additionally, from 2011 to

2019, Netflix maintained a streaming rights deal with teen-oriented network The CW.1

The CW-Netflix partnership provided a steadfast presence of popular teen dramas such as

1 Though in 2019 The CW did not renew its longstanding deal, instead moving streaming rights for future CW shows to HBO Max, the CW shows that premiered before 2019 continue to stream on Netflix (Andreeva 2019a, 2019b). 18 Riverdale (2017–) on the service. Especially because Netflix evades comparison to linear television in intra-industry dialogue, an examination of the similarities between Netflix and linear television providers The CW and Freeform is necessary to connect Netflix to the lineage of branding teen television that it has long been a part of and to better understand how the streaming service has engaged with the norms and expectations set up around teen femininity.

Moving beyond Netflix promotion addressed specifically to teen girls, this project also demonstrates how at different sites, Netflix’s marketing of teen-oriented properties might center adults, parents, or older women as the key viewers of teen shows and movies. The variation between accounts reveals social media as a valuable site through which to study how Netflix constructs audience segments. At the same time, examining the consistent techniques the service employed across social media, including direct address, media references, or mimicking the language of a particular demographic/taste culture, shows how Netflix cultivates an imagined intimacy with any audience.

19

Figure 0.2: A Twitter user expresses skepticism of Netflix’s use of personal address. Netflix humorously reiterates their direct address with a movie reference to 1999’s Notting Hill. This exchange demonstrates several major strategies Netflix uses to relate to subscribers on social media. (Netflix US 2018x)

A recurring social media strategy of particular interest to this study is Netflix’s invocation of diversity. Other scholars have noted Netflix’s mobilization of inclusivity on social media to cultivate an intimacy with audiences, including both Latinx and LGBTQ subscribers, while also noting that the service’s words do not always match its actions

(Yanders 2019). Expanding on this topic, this project critically examines how, via social media platforms, Netflix uses a rhetoric of inclusivity to discursively construct a

20 friendship with an imagined young female audience, even as the teen femininities Netflix promotes are most often cis, white, able-bodied, and thin.

Literature Review

This project picks up on strands of literature in the interrelated fields of television studies, audience studies, promotional media industry studies, and digital media studies. In the following section, I provide an overview of specific studies of Netflix that incorporate these bodies of literature, focusing in particular on work that addresses industrial constructions of the audience. I identify a tendency in scholarship to focus on how

Netflix creates individualized viewing experiences and on how the Netflix platform works. In other words, most scholarship thus far has focused on the mechanics of the platform rather than Netflix’s public communications and marketing practices. While continuing to examine the streaming service’s categorization and claims to customization, I argue further attention is required to how Netflix appears to imagine groups of audiences outside of its digital service. To examine the young, female audiences implied in certain pockets of Netflix promotional materials, I situate my study alongside feminist studies of television and popular culture. Changes in the industrial, cultural, and reception contexts in the post-network era of television require further investigation in terms of how they have shifted engagement with female audiences and feminization of popular culture. Specifically, I tackle Netflix’s adoption of certain

21 feminist tenets in digitally enclosed spaces to position itself as an ally to young girls.

Finally, I explain why I find an intersectional feminist media studies approach to be important to employ when discussing televisual and digital femininities.

Scholarly literature about the relationship between streaming services and audiences to date mainly focuses on how Netflix constructs its service to target individual subscribers, but does not consider how Netflix targets aggregates of viewers. In particular, television scholars have theorized how Netflix offers individuals personal viewing experiences through the concepts of time-shifting and binge-watching (which offer personalized scheduling of media; Wayne 2017; Loock 2018), as well as microcasting (which offers personalized content; Jenner 2017; Tryon 2015). Adjacently, work in digital media studies has explored how algorithmic recommendation systems and user data collection contributes to Netflix’s construction of individualized viewing experiences (Hallinan and Striphas 2016; Hills 2018). Thus, both television studies and digital media studies have tended to overemphasize how Netflix conceptualizes an individual viewer. However, a few insightful works in television studies have tackled how Netflix’s promotional campaigns and public statements single out audience segments, such as working-age middle-class (DeCarvalho and Cox 2016; DeCarvalho and Martinez-Carillo 2018) or transnational audiences (Lobato 2019). Nonetheless, more work can be done to study how Netflix imagines and engages with communities of viewers—and a young, female audience in particular.

Study of Netflix’s imagined audiences also focuses on the Netflix digital product rather than on Netflix’s intra-industry and public-facing communications. Jonathan Gray 22 (2017) points out that the public statements which digital outlets share about audiences withhold the specific data and methodologies used to make such determinations. For example, Netflix frequently crows about adjustments made to its features and content using data that is not available publicly. Through such actions, it presents itself as excavating the hidden truth as to what subscribers really want. The service claims that their data allows them to know subscribers better than they know themselves (Roettgers

2019). As a result, Gray proposes scholarship should challenge the knowledge Netflix and other tech companies (claim to) produce about users through the development of quantitative methods that will “create some of our own datasets and algorithms” about

Netflix’s functionality (2017, 82).

Other researchers have been concerned with the ramifications of algorithmic recommendation systems on audiences. For example, Neta Alexander (2016) studies how

Netflix codes user profiles and tags media in order to suggest that while the service claims to empower subscribers to find what they did not know they wanted to see, it filters exposure to potentially meaningful media that did not fit into the algorithm.

Netflix’s use of data also has ethical repercussions for subscribers in terms of intrusion on privacy and cooptation of immaterial labor. In response, Brita Ytre-Arne and Ranjana

Das (2019) develop a research agenda “in the interest of audiences” that prioritizes individual audience interactions with digital interfaces in order to address these intrusions and cooptations alongside providing greater accounting for user agency. For these pressing reasons and others, scholars in television and digital media studies have focused on the operations of the Netflix platform itself. 23 Though I do not want to minimize the urgency of work on the Netflix platform itself, I want to make the case for renewed attention to how Netflix constructs relationships with audiences elsewhere as well: whether in trade and journalistic discourse, investor reports, physical and digital promotions, or elsewhere. What I think warrants further scrutiny here, in particular, is how these types of sources present different understandings of Netflix-audience relations. The Netflix platform itself addresses an individual user employing granular customizations based on viewing history. In contrast, a Netflix social media account addresses a general public with the same posts. On social media, Netflix cannot use the same strategies it uses on the service because it cannot access the same level of information about users and cannot address them within their individual silos. Due to differences in scale and composition of people reached, Netflix’s methods to engage audiences on the service require separate consideration from those off the service. This thesis works toward an understanding of how Netflix, outside of the platform itself, mitigates the challenges of promoting broad offerings to subscribers with different interests by constructing separate promotional streams for imagined subsets of audiences. Netflix’s social media promotion is all the more interesting to consider because it has not yet been matched by similar families of social media profiles on other legacy networks or streaming services, though some brands outside of filmed entertainment, like the New York Times and Nike have also developed different accounts for different market segments.

Prior work has touched on how Netflix varies its address to audiences. Amanda

Lotz (2017) argues that rather than pursuing a broadcast “mass” strategy, which would 24 mean developing content for all viewers to watch, or a cable channel “niche” strategy, which would mean developing content for one narrow taste group or demographic,

Netflix uses a “conglomerated niche” strategy, serving multiple audiences in the nooks and crannies of the service. Similarly, looking at Netflix advertisements from across the globe, Timothy Havens (2018) argues that, at the highest level, Netflix draws on associations with its service to hail subscribers as youthful, individualistic users empowered with immediate gratification of desire (Havens 2018). However, Havens also suggests that, much like broadcast television created dayparts to reach different audiences within a broader schedule, Netflix uses categories on the service to combine families of programs and attract their associated audiences. Instead of identifying family brands or niches on the service proper as do Lotz and Havens, this thesis instead argues that

Netflix’s social media accounts appear to cultivate demographic- and taste-based audience segments. To demonstrate this, I turn to Netflix’s audience stratification strategy when it comes teen-targeted, female oriented properties.

In addressing how Netflix produces, distributes, and markets media for young, female audiences, this project also contributes to studies of feminized pop culture and its audiences (Modleski 1984; Ang 1985; McRobbie 1991; Radway 1991; Bobo 1995).

These studies brought attention to cultural forms considered frivolous and not worthy of attention. Collectively, they make the case that by studying the products marketed to and consumed by women, scholars can learn about how the feminine gets constructed and experienced. Despite the preponderance of such studies prior to the 2000s, Elana Levine

(2015) identifies a lapse in this area of inquiry in recent scholarship, with feminist media 25 scholars turning their attention in other directions, especially as intellectual engagement with post-structuralism and queer and transgender theories have challenged a universal construction of women. However, Levine argues that since the turn of the century, increased movement toward digital media and audience segmentation practices have in fact renewed the need for scholarly engagement with feminized pop culture. Responding to Levine’s call to revisit and update the investigation into feminized popular culture, I undertake this study of how Netflix produces narratives that continue to form the categories of the feminine, teen, and young woman. In particular, the platform’s strategic

“feminism” requires further scrutiny. Netflix’s friendly social media voice appears to embrace all kinds of teens and broaden acceptance of those who are left out of the feminine as a key strategy to attract audiences.

Thus, an awareness of postfeminist and popular feminist constructions of women is key to contextualizing Netflix’s promotion of teen properties. According to Sarah

Banet-Weiser (2018), the 2010s marked a rise in popular feminism as well as industries and brands capitalizing on the idea of girls’ and women’s self-confidence, leadership, and loving one’s body. These brands and products have offered individual solutions to gender inequality, lack of self-esteem, and physical dissatisfaction through consumption of and participating with brands. Popular feminism may differ from postfeminism in acknowledging gender inequality as problem, but it follows the overarching tenets of postfeminism. Women’s confidence discourse corresponds to signature characteristics of postfeminism that Rosalind Gill (2007) has outlined: a woman’s empowerment through her body, especially through consumerism that will improve her body. As I will discuss 26 in chapter 1, teen television networks The CW and Freeform have each sold the idea of self-confidence and empowerment to young women through the purchase of clothing and makeup featured on the programs. Less focused on partnerships with advertisers due to its subscriber-based business model, Netflix nonetheless propagates similar ideas about how personal style empowers young women through their bodies.

In this study, I take an intersectional approach to examining the construction of young women through Netflix’s social media sites. Though I focus predominantly on gender, my discussion will draw in different versions of the feminine to the extent that they are identified or ignored in the materials I examine. I find this important because of the way the rhetoric of postfeminist self-confidence pervades how Netflix presents all identity issues. Though Netflix often acknowledges the diverse identities of women in promotion to teens, their differences are discussed in the context of individual confidence or choices about style rather than wide-ranging structural challenges. In this way, Netflix bundles all difference into loving yourself as a woman. Thus, a discussion of femininities in Netflix’s promotional activities must critically engage with how the empowerment popular feminism offers silences diversities within feminine experience.

Methodological approach

This project combines television history with discourse analysis of industry, journalistic and trade, as well as promotional and paratextual materials, drawing from work by

Jonathan Gray (2010) on paratexts, Paul Grainge and Catherine Johnson (2015) on 27 promotional media industries, and John Caldwell (2006) on industry discourse. The first chapter of this project provides a historical overview of audience segmentation, channel branding, and trends in the promotional industries as they play out in relation to The WB,

The CW, and Freeform, summarizing a time period from the ‘90s to the middle of the

2010s. Following this contextualizing chapter, I focus on the late 2010s using a core method of discourse analysis. Though Netflix’s last few years have been characterized by a push toward global distribution, and discourses about teens certainly circulate internationally, time and space constraints limit the focus of this project to the US context.

Chapter 2 examines press releases, investor reports, and journalistic discourse from 2016 through 2019 as provided on the Netflix website in December 2019. I conducted additional research through trade journals to expand on or clarify pertinent topics. The press releases and investor reports reflect, in a specific way, Netflix’s strategy and objectives for teen-centric media. John Caldwell (2006) proposes that documents, discourse, and other forms of knowledge the media industries produce about themselves reveal not how they really are, but how they wish to seem. This “critical industrial practice” discloses cultural assumptions the media industries make about what matters and why. Thus, though Netflix press releases and investor reports should not be trusted because they are framed to make Netflix seem the best possible way to press and investors respectively, in examining them for discussion of teen-centric media, I engage with what message Netflix constructs about teen audiences. Mostly, the service is concerned with using the popularity of teen properties and its home-grown celebrities as 28 evidence of the service’s cultural influence. Meanwhile, journalistic discourse reflects the general reception of Netflix’s teen material. Including this reception context also allows me to situate Netflix’s promotional practices alongside the broader cultural dialogues they connected with.

For chapters 3 and 4, I chose two case studies to examine the promotional strategies that Netflix has employed for its teen programming: Netflix original television series 13 Reasons Why (2017–) and Netflix original movie To All the Boys I’ve Loved

Before (2018). 13 Reasons and To All the Boys are among Netflix’s first efforts to release a teen series and movie respectively, and they are also consistently celebrated by the platform for their popularity, allegedly standing out in terms of number of viewers received compared to other Netflix properties as well in relation to the types of content released via other distribution outlets (e.g., theaters, cable) in the US during their release years. Twitter identified 13 Reasons as the most discussed show on its platform in 2017

(Wagmeister 2017a) and Netflix called To All the Boys “one of our most viewed original films ever with strong repeat viewing” (Netflix 2018e) in an earnings report released just two months after the film’s premiere. Although Netflix did not produce 13 Reasons and

To All the Boys via its own studios (the former came from Paramount, the latter from

Awesomeness), Netflix calls them “originals” because they are licensed for the platform for first-window distribution.

This study engages with the promotional materials surrounding 13 Reasons and

To All the Boys rather than with the individual film and TV series as texts to be analyzed.

Specifically, I look at social media posts related to 13 Reasons and To All the Boys on 29 Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube. My approach is in line with Jonathan Gray’s (2010) paratextual analysis, which argues that seemingly peripheral texts like promotional advertisements, promo featurettes, and other tie-in activities impact how audiences anticipate, understand, and interact with movies and television shows. Thus, as Paul

Grainge and Catherine Johnson (2015) argue, promotional texts are a key tool that television providers can use in an attempt to manage relationships with viewers, or to model how viewers should engage with a given program. For instance, the authors show that a companion app for The Walking Dead (AMC, 2010–) “privileged certain forms of social behaviour around the series over others”—namely counting how many zombies had died instead of discussing the relationships between characters as was common in fan spaces—“resulting in an app that favoured a particularly masculinized reading of the series” (141). My analysis of the promotional paratexts provided on social media for 13

Reasons and To All the Boys aims to reveal what understandings of the show and movie

Netflix privileges in different social media ecologies.

13 Reasons spans four seasons whereas To All the Boys has one sequel released and another in post-production. This study covers Netflix’s social media coverage surrounding the two media properties during their initial appearances in 2017 and 2018 respectively. To gather data from Twitter, I used the Twitter search engine for the desired date range. I was able to access all tweets and replies for the accounts I considered within specific time frames. Unfortunately, using this method I could not recover Twitter retweets and mentions, and therefore do not have a sense of what posts Netflix curated to their feed from other accounts. However, the tweets and replies offer substantial 30 information. Because Instagram has fewer posts in comparison to the deluge on Netflix’s

Twitter, I was able to scroll to and access all posts in the time period I wanted using a web browser. Netflix on YouTube, however, had too many videos to scroll through to get to the right time ranges. Further, some older videos are set to private. The YouTube search engine allowed me to search key words within the Netflix YouTube channel, and I tried several related both to 13 Reasons and To All the Boys. Cross-referencing the videos

I was able to find this way with playlists of videos about the show/movie Netflix made, I was able to gain an understanding of what Netflix posted about them and about other teen properties. However, I do not have a snapshot of what else the YouTube accounts were posting about at the time, unlike with Twitter and Instagram. With my findings on

YouTube limited in this way, I do not make conclusions about the account’s broader voice to the extent that I do with Twitter and Instagram accounts. Lastly, I look at Tumblr in a very limited capacity. Although I find Tumblr posts have a teen sensibility, Netflix used the social media website too sporadically in 2017 and 2018 to offer much meaningful evidence.

Chapter Overview

Chapter 1 situates Netflix’s promotion of teen-centric media in relation to how teen television historically has hailed viewers, pointing out continuities from linear to streaming. I survey studies of The WB, The CW, and ABC Family/Freeform, focusing on promotional materials and audience engagement campaigns from the ‘90s to the early 31 2010s, especially digital ones where applicable. Comparing the strategies of the three networks to attract and manage relationships with viewers, I draw out three main points that provide insight into Netflix’s approach. First, I show how The WB, The CW, and

Freeform collectively construct their brands around a youthful sensibility or lifestyle based on media and tech savviness, the latest trends in clothing and music, and young, beautiful celebrities. Second, despite creating series for a niche audience, these three television networks sought to draw in as broad a coalition of “teen” audiences as possible, balancing strategies to appeal to teens and to other constituencies like young girls, parents, or working adults. Finally, as television recording and streaming have emerged as alternate and popular modes of viewing, traditional ratings for network television have continued to shrink and The CW and Freeform have invoked the popularity of their programs on Twitter to argue they have wide-ranging cultural impact.

The second chapter analyzes statements from Netflix producers and executives about the company’s strategies when it comes to young, female audiences, teasing out contradictions. High-level Netflix executives, including CEO Reed Hastings, Chief

Product Officer Greg Peters, and Chief Content Officer Ted Sarandos, do not discuss teens as an audience unit that the company targets in particular, instead stressing that the product that Netflix promotes and recommends is based only on viewing histories. Still, investor reports between 2016 and 2019 frequently invoke teen-targeted media to show how much Netflix has been discussed online, allowing high-level executives to make broader claims about Netflix’s expansive cultural impact. Further, lower-level executives on the side of both television and movies have discussed how Netflix handles kids, teen, 32 and family programming. In distinction to communications with investors, which focus on algorithmic prediction and broad appeal of the platform, public-facing presentations suggest audience strategies are related to audience segments.

Chapters 3 and 4 move away from the intra-industrial focus of Chapter 2 to instead address how Netflix constructs audiences in social media promotion for 13

Reasons and To All the Boys respectively. For each chapter, I analyze Netflix’s social media posts from two months before and after the release of the show/movie. For 13

Reasons I look predominantly at how @netflix on Twitter constructs the show for parent- viewers looking to connect with their teens whereas @13ReasonWhy on Twitter cultivates itself as a space where teen viewers can become friends with the show’s celebrities and with show itself. For To All the Boys I find @netflixfilm on Instagram and

Twitter sells To All the Boys to mature film geeks who like to be knowledgeable about all movies, while @netflix on Twitter captures professional women who are fans of the genre. In contrast, @netflix on Instagram and YouTube constructs To All the Boys as a teen-oriented experience, linking its appeal to that of other teen properties on the platform, like Riverdale and The Kissing Booth.

Analysis for both media properties ends with an examination of similarities across the different social media accounts, including a use of humor and references, as well as a rhetoric of inclusivity. I discuss how Netflix treats such issues as mental health, race, sexuality, and ability in relation to 13 Reasons and To All the Boys as well as how these issues are discussed on the different social media accounts in general. Throughout

Netflix’s social media outlets, discourses about female empowerment dominates 33 discussions of diversity. I end this chapter with an analysis of how Netflix constructs teen femininities. Adopting the voice of a teenage girl and building a rapport over their shared affection of Netflix media, Netflix suggests young women can inhabit feminine identities through dressing well and believing in themselves.

In the conclusion, I suggest several directions for future study based on the findings of this thesis. The international context is important to consider in broadening understanding of Netflix’s strategies for teen audiences because of how targeting trendsetting teens might serve as an entryway for Netflix’s development of international markets. Netflix’s social media use to target other audiences, including dedicating accounts for black, LGBT, or parent audiences, for example, also remain underexplored.

Finally, an ethnographic study of Netflix social media workers might unpack how the female-coded field of social media work, in contrast to the masculine work cultures of media production, opens up an alternate space for exploring potentially subversive expressions of cultural values.

34 Chapter 1 Family-Friendly and Edgy-Taboo: Attracting “Teen” Audiences

To draw out how Netflix continues major trajectories in the audience formation of US television, this chapter lays out previous and current teen-oriented networks’ audience and promotional strategies, focusing on three main areas. First, it connects strategies employed by The WB, The CW, and Freeform to broader trends in digital promotion. As the filmed entertainment industries have shifted branding strategies in digital spaces to prioritize affect marketing, shareable media, and co-creation of brand values, the teen- oriented networks have sought to establish greater levels intimacy with teen audiences.

The juxtaposition of The WB’s strategies with Netflix’s highlight shifts in industry- audience relationships, in particular the transition from brands envisioned as a lifestyle in the ‘90s and 2000s to brands mobilized as friends in the late 2010s.

Second, this chapter is concerned with how The WB, The CW, and Freeform construct teen audiences, focusing on the cultural connotations they set up about young women as well as where and how the three networks include appeals to diversity.

Through suggesting that achieving beauty will lead to self-acceptance and success in society, and offering this acceptance and empowerment to teens, The WB, The CW, and

Freeform created a cultural space that supported feminine identities, but one that also largely defined women’s value in terms of appearance and centered a white, heterosexual ideal of beauty. Netflix’s representation of teens picks up on these ideas.

35 Finally, this chapter illustrates how, even though The WB, The CW, and Freeform are teen-oriented networks, they also seek to capture broader constituencies. The narrowcasting model of demographic-based television has been contrasted in industry and scholarly discourse with the broad offerings Netflix provides, but I illustrate that niche networks bear more resemblance to Netflix than is immediately apparent. In sum, each of the three lines of inquiry in this chapter work toward the broader point that— despite frequent claims to the contrary by both Netflix and the popular press—what the streaming service does is not new.

The chapter proceeds as follows: first, an overview of broadcast, narrowcast, and streaming models from the ‘80s to today sets the context for discussion of audience construction. Sections on The WB, The CW, and Freeform, respectively, follow. For each of the three networks, I analyze promotional campaigns, online engagement, and the audience characteristics implied in these materials. Operating from 1995 to 2006, The

WB developed audience attraction and promotional strategies that, as we shall see, have been hugely influential for both The CW and Freeform. Meanwhile, broadcast channel

The CW and cable channel Freeform have been the largest teen-oriented networks in the

US since the mid-2000s and are currently Netflix’s biggest competitors (as well as frequent partners throughout the 2010s) when it comes to licensing, producing, and distributing teen content. There are subtle differences in the definition of teen audiences between The CW and Freeform, with the former more focused on attracting young adults and the latter prioritizing family-friendly viewing. The chapter closes with a discussion of these and other differences between the three networks, setting up the context for the 36 following chapters’ discussion of the range of strategies Netflix employs to target young, female audiences.

From Mass to Niche to Individual

After MTV and Fox experienced success with programming targeted to teen and young adult viewers in the ‘80s and ‘90s, in 1995 Warner Bros. and Paramount developed The

WB and UPN respectively, the first networks to focus mostly on teens (Wee 2008, 45). In the US, the ‘80s and ‘90s continued the economic transition from Fordist to post-Fordist economic practices, fueled by dramatic deregulation and conglomeration in the media industries, ongoing societal fragmentation, and technological developments such as digital video recording and the maturation of cable television distribution (Hilmes 2013).

This complex mixture of economic, political, cultural, and technological factors led to the launch of several new broadcast networks and cable channels, disrupting the Big Three networks’ (CBS, NBC, ABC) longstanding domination over US television.

The new networks and channels continued to turn away from the already declining strategy of the Big Three to develop programming acceptable to the largest possible audience. Instead, hoping to draw audiences who may have felt disengaged with general broadcast fare, the new networks and channels developed programming that would uniquely appeal to specific audience demographics and interest groups. As

Amanda Lotz notes, niche targeting included “channels such as CNN seeking out those interested in news, ESPN attending to a sports audience, and MTV aiming at youth

37 culture” (2007, 14). The more cable channels that emerged, the narrower the audience niches became. As a result, this transitional period of television history, in between the earlier broadcast network era and the current period of emerging digital platforms, has been strongly associated with targeting niche audiences (Lotz 2007).

Catherine Johnson (2011) suggests that the impetus to brand television also emerged at this juncture, consisting of a collection of strategies that cable channels used to communicate their values and manage their relationships with cable operators, audiences, and advertisers. More than a programming strategy to draw viewers, a specific niche audience was at the heart of this branding (Johnson 2011, 16). For instance,

Johnson shows that MTV equated itself to youth audiences through pursuing strategies such as research on and interviews with 14-to-34-year-olds to help establish how the network should look. It also launched competitions and awards shows that viewers voted for, with the goal of encouraging a “sense of ownership and belonging in its viewers” and to “position MTV as a destination for its target audience and a central part of their everyday lives” (Johnson 2011, 20). As Johnson writes, MTV’s brand “is not simply positioned as the corporation’s, but also as the viewer’s, so that the emphasis is on asserting not only that the executive gets the audience, just like the MTV brand does, but also on proclaiming that there is no boundary between the executive, the brand and the audience—they all embody the same values and experiences” (Johnson 2011, 20–21).

Further demonstrating the relationship between audience targeting and branding,

Johnson identifies Fox, whose development was concurrent with MTV’s launch in the

‘80s, as the first broadcast network to attempt constructing a brand identity (2011, 24). 38 As Johnson puts it, Fox tried “not only to attract audiences to the network, but also to create loyalty and a sense of belonging between the network and its audience” (2011, 25).

Like MTV, Fox created several programs for teen audiences, such as the first teen television drama Beverly Hills 90210 (1990–2000). Thus, both MTV and Fox set a precedent for how television networks have historically embedded young audiences into their brands, emulating the preferences and values of youth, and inviting those young audiences to feel at home within the network. Fox’s target audience narrowed to young professionals by the mid-‘90s (Wilks 2019, 36), leaving room in the television market for a new teen channel and the emergence of The WB, which would follow in Fox’s footsteps to develop a broadcast model using the targeted audience strategies associated with cable television.

Netflix appears different from Fox and MTV of the ‘80s and ‘90s because it does not target teen audiences specifically. Television industry leaders and trade journals describe Netflix as “a collection of assets that has no identity beyond its sprawling catalogue…relying on the brute force of its vast output” rather than on fine-tuned curation for a specific audience (Wallenstein 2019). With the emergence of over-the-top services that distribute television digitally, Johnson (2011) argues that the television industry has become more interested in branding around the experiences that television provides, rather than branding to serve audience niches. She offers Hulu’s late 2000s brand identity as an example of how “the focus is on selling Hulu as providing an enhanced experience of television viewing, one that is promoted as better than broadcasting” (56). Similarly, Timothy Havens (2018) argues that while cable in the 39 1990s and early 2000s had emphasized demographic-specific identities, Netflix and other streaming platforms center their brand on “a disruption of scheduled television viewing”

(326). Johnson and Havens identify an increased attention given to individuals over audience niches in the branding of streaming platforms. Similarly, Derek Johnson describes the Netflix service as creating “multiple channels of individualized viewer experience” (2018, 10). More generally, William Uricchio (2014) summarizes changes in television as involving a transition “from mass audiences, to niche audiences, to individuals” (275).

This chapter challenges the association of linear channels with niche and nonlinear services with individual appeal. As linear television networks expand the availability of their programs online, the flexibility and customization of the service

Netflix offers is becoming relatively less unique. Though I agree that Netflix emphasized individualization in the early 2010s, digital functionality is becoming a less compelling trait to emphasize in the company’s brand in the 2020s, and Netflix has begun to experiment with constructing audience groups based on demographics and taste.

Furthermore, the association of teen-oriented networks with niche audiences has been overstated in juxtapositions of linear channels with Netflix. Much like Netflix would do in the late 2010s, The WB struck a balance between branding aimed at attracting teen audiences specifically and other promotional efforts that could attract a broader audience.

40 The WB’s Teen Sensibility and Lifestyle Channel Branding in the ‘90s

In 1993, Congress dissolved the Financial Interest and Syndication Rules (“fin-syn”), making it possible for broadcasters to own and produce more of the shows that they aired on their channels (i.e., facilitating vertical integration in broadcast television). Having successfully circumvented these fin-syn regulations since 1986, Fox showed the financial and creative benefits to be had in owning a network that distributed internally produced content (Wee 2008, 45). Likely taking inspiration from Fox as well as fearing a decline in programming purchases from broadcasters who were now being positioned to develop their own programming, independent television companies Warner Bros. and Paramount secured a guaranteed distribution outlet for their studios’ programs with the 1995 launch of their respective networks, The WB and UPN (Lausch 2013, 26). Though a broadcast rather than cable network, The WB hired key marketing personnel who had worked at

Fox and adopted niche audience targeting strategies (Wee 2008, 46; Hontz 1999). Jamie

Kellner, one of the executives who moved from Fox to The WB and served as managing general partner at the time of The WB’s launch, pointed The WB toward a niche demographic of 12-to-34-year-olds (Wee 2008, 46). Unlike MTV, which targeted the same age range, The WB came to be popularly known as a teen girls’ brand.

Press credited The WB’s late ‘90s success—drawing advertising rates comparable to those of the established networks at its height (Lausch 2013, 27)—to the network’s

“ability to attract the burgeoning teenage demographic” (Kearney 2007, 38). But despite industry and journalist focus on the growth and profitability of the teen demographic in

41 the ‘90s, The WB also sought older audiences to make its network lucrative. Though

Kellner believed that The WB should include the teen audience in its demographic, he also stated that “you don’t get as many dollars for teen viewers as adults 18-34” (Kearney

2007, 18). Thus, Mary Celeste Kearney (2007) argues that The WB succeeded through marketing to a broad transgenerational audience, which included adults who might relate to younger characters as they postpone or escape the expectations of adulthood. As

Valerie Wee (2008, 47) observes, in the ‘90s, the meaning of teen shifted from explicitly representing an age group to appealing to a collection of cultural tastes and values associated with youth, including “a range of idealized qualities such as vitality, excitement, vigor, promise, and cutting-edge interests” (47). The WB was “aligning with a broader market that could relate to and embrace a teen lifestyle” (48).

The WB’s strategy was consistent with general practices in branding during the

1990s. Sarah Banet-Weiser (2007) has argued that by the 2000s, television brands had fully transitioned to selling lifestyles or experiences rather than simply a product or service. Illustrative of how exactly The WB sold a teen experience is a 2000 promotional spot the network produced. Called “The Night is Young,” it features the network’s stars dressed up and partying at an urban club (Wee 2008, 55). The promo captured the idea that The WB is where you go to party with all of the young, attractive, fashionable, and successful actors from its programs. Crucially, the advertisement relies on the idea of teen not as an age but as a youthful experience available to anyone who watches The

WB. Using lifestyle branding in the ‘90s, The WB set a precedent for targeting a taste

42 formation while gesturing toward a demographic. This resonates with the way Netflix presents teen material as serving audiences of all ages.

The network also presented values concerning women and diversity as part of its youthful teen brand, which helped attract a broad audience. The WB’s most iconic shows, such as Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1997–2003), Charmed (1998–2006), The Gilmore

Girls (2000–2007), and Felicity (1998–2002) featured strong female heroines who embraced girlyness alongside a do-it-yourself, better-than-the-boys attitude (Lausch

2013, 16–18; Banet-Weiser 2007, 106). The WB’s portrayal of female empowerment augmented the network’s overall commitment to explore difficult, often controversial issues in storylines with a socially progressive tone, including relationships with family and peers as well as topics such as sexual identity, sex and abusive relationships, alcohol and drug use, and alienation and suicide (Wee 2008, 50–52).

However, Wee argues that The WB’s treatment of serious and relevant issues

“tended to fall on the conservative side” (2008, 51). For instance, Wee demonstrates that

Buffy (1997–2003) and Dawson’s Creek (1998–2003) included gay and lesbian characters, but did not show homosexual kissing or explore gay lifestyles in depth (2008,

51, 59). This shallow representation of gay and lesbian characters suggest The WB was contributing to the trend in the 2000s on the major broadcasters, and in particular on

Bravo, to attract young professional viewers through the inclusion of gay characters and storylines. Though these programs invited queer viewers to relate to these characters, the chief concern was to attract young adult viewers. The networks worked to construct gay characters’ taste as trendy. As Bravo executives stated, they were hoping young, female 43 viewers would be drawn to these hip gay characters (Lausch 2013, 14–15; Sender 2007;

Becker 2006). Thus, The WB’s progressive storylines can be understood as associating the WB brand with a trend-setting cool meant to appeal to teen and young adult female audiences rather than as thoughtfully inclusive.

Similarly, The WB pursued a multiracial, urban aesthetic to attract young viewers through the inclusion of actors of different racial backgrounds. Lauren Wilks (2019) shows that though The WB adopted casting practices that would produce visually racially diverse casts, these efforts often lacked substance. Promotional spots like “The Night is

Young” marginalized black cast members, while storylines rarely engaged with racial difference (100–105). Thus, Wilks argues, “the network highlights through a surface- level inclusion the presence of non-White actors, thereby emphasizing a non-specific sense of diversity while avoiding racial specificity” (53–54). As with gay and lesbian characters, including racially diverse characters allowed The WB to tap into an urban cool that would appeal to teen and young women without relinquishing the white heteronormative lifestyle at its center.

Indeed, Wee suggests the “WB teen” existed in “a white, affluent, and suburban context” (2008, 49) where a hip, socially progressive tone had a conservative thrust. As a broadcast network, The WB was vulnerable to government regulation and more dependent on securing advertising dollars as compared to subscription-based cable networks. Thus, The WB sought to temper programming to secure as large an audience share as possible. In other words, The WB capitalized on the way controversial topics and diverse representations might attract and appeal to teens and young adults, but ultimately 44 subscribed to white, heterosexual hegemonic norms that they hoped would be inoffensive to older audiences and parents, as well as a core white audience.

Much like The WB’s, Netflix’s representation of women and diversity in promotional material makes a claim that the streaming service understands young girls of all backgrounds, that the brand captures teen values and is cool and relevant. However, these social media posts center a white, popular feminism nascent in the girl power of the late ‘90s and early 2000s, whose continued development can be traced in more detail through the promotional strategies of The CW and Freeform.

“Mind-Blowingly Inappropriate”: The “CW Woman” and TV to Tweet About

Though The WB became a successful and recognized teen network, it struggled to remain profitable through the first years of the 2000s, especially as new cable channels and the major broadcasters developed teen programming that replicated the success of The WB.

Warner Bros.’s The WB sought to pool resources and secure profits through merging with CBS’s UPN, forming The CW in early 2006 (Wee 2008, 57).

Although technically it remained a broadcast network, The CW furthered the precedent set by Fox and The WB to target a niche audience in a manner more similar to cable channels of the time. Much as The WB had framed its channel as a space for teen lifestyles, The CW launched in 2006 with the marketing campaign “Free To Be,” which pulled together the network’s shows under the sentiment of being yourself. Recalling The

WB’s construction as the downtown club where all the hippest teens go, ads for the netlet 45 avowed that The CW was a place where viewers could be different, real, or whatever they wanted (Lausch 2013, 38–39).

Over time, The CW version of teen sensibility diverged from that of The WB.

Though The CW sought for well over a decade to capture audiences based girl power, most consistently in the late 2000s and early 2010s, The CW’s programming and branding suggest an audience “who are not invested in ‘girl power’ and would rather go shopping instead” (Lausch 2013, 71–72). As evident with flagship shows such as Gossip

Girl (2007–2012) and The Vampire Diaries (2009–2017), The CW settled on a formula of producing sexy and scandalous dramas with attractive characters in a glossy setting

(Lausch 2013, 75).

Furthermore, The CW amplified The WB’s use of young, attractive ensemble casts in branding practices, relying heavily on sex appeal to attract audiences. As Lausch writes, The CW’s brand was characterized by “ads featuring barely-clothed actors and series with sexual content as explicit as broadcast standards allow” (2013, 5). Though less essential with Free To Be, sex appeal has been a central component of major subsequent CW marketing campaigns, including 2009’s “TV To Talk About,” and 2011’s

“TV Now.”

This sexy version of teen sensibility speaks to The CW’s focus on a demographic of young professional women. Like many channels that were seeking out more and more specific audiences in the 2000s, The CW further refined The WB’s target audience from

12–34-year-olds of both sexes to 18–34-year old white, middle- or upper-class females.

Executives stated that they could still “be cool” with teens, while focusing on the more 46 reliable and lucrative audience of young adult women (Lausch 2013, 34, 37). Paul

McGuire, CW Head of Communications from 2006 to 2010, stressed that though Gossip

Girl featured teen characters, its target audience was 18–34-year-old women and its adult issues and adult levels of sexuality appealed to adults (Stein 2015, 99). Similarly, writing about The CW’s brand, Megan Connor argues that the “scandalous, sexualized marketing campaign for Gossip Girl further configured the network’s programming as a ‘guilty pleasure’ for older female viewers” (2015, 58). In other words, The CW strategically constructed shows as transgressive and sexual to provoke the interest of those older audiences. With its focus on older women, The CW’s youthful sensibility is different from The WB’s, clearly demonstrating how teen niche branding often links to a taste formation rather than an age group.

Collaborators and Participants: How The CW Drew in Audiences on Social Media

Evident in each CW marketing campaign, beyond the reliance on racy graphics, is a connection to the digital world. The WB had attempted to engage viewers online to a degree. For instance, for Dawson’s Creek The WB would link to fan-run websites, acknowledging, rewarding, and encouraging viewers to sustain their interest in the series

(Lausch 2013, 59–60). Starting with its 2006 launch, The CW developed and refined strategies for targeting youthful audiences online.

The trend of engaging audiences on social media, and especially strategies related to using Twitter (see Patterson 2018), have been noted across the television industry in 47 the 2010s—including in the broadcasting, cable, and streaming sectors—to target all sorts of audiences (Gillan 2014). Broadly, Catherine Johnson and Paul Grainge (2015) describe how the filmed entertainment industry has recognized the potential of online conversations, sharing, and creation to produce attention and increase loyalty both from new viewers and from advertisers. A precursor to Netflix’s brand, The CW is not yet speaking as a friend who is engaging in the same media activities as audiences, but The

CW does present itself as an entity that invites access and intimacy to the media, characters, and celebrities audiences want.

The CW’s comprehensive digital engagement strategy commenced with the network’s launch. From 2006 to 2009 during the Free to Be campaign, a section on the

CW website called the CW Lab promised creative contribution to The CW brand by allowing viewers to create promos for their favorite shows, which could air on primetime or earn the creator a summer internship with The CW (Nordyke 2006; Murphy 2008, 23;

Lausch 2013, 58). Incorporating audiences into The CW spaces even further, the netlet also established a social media presence both on its website, with a message board section called The CW Lounge, and on MySpace, which was at the height of its popularity in this time period (Nordyke 2006; Elber 2006). Caryn Murphy argues that the

Free to Be Famous campaign and the network’s interest in “a site mainly populated and trafficked by people under 30 years old” together function “to make young viewers see the network as interactive…and to see themselves as creative participants in the network”

(2008, 23). Thus, beginning with its first marketing campaign, The CW mobilized digital spaces as a way to invite and include audiences into The CW’s brand. 48 From 2009–2012, during the TV to Talk About campaign, The CW fully embraced watching television as a multi-screen activity. Key iterations of the slogan included “TV to text about,” “blog about,” and “tweet about” (Stuart 2009). During this time period, The CW moved away from relying mostly on its own website for engagement. For example, The CW Lounge message board of the website morphed into the CW Pinboard, which now featured Twitter posts from fans (Lausch 2013, 58).

Further, The CW experimented with Twitter feeds, having cast and crew members encourage viewers to watch live airings of episodes (58).

Then, the TV Now campaign from 2012 to 2015 fully incorporated social media into The CW identity. During this time, The CW also expanded their use of social media accounts. On Twitter, The Vampire Diaries Twitter page would ask viewers to tweet with the official hashtag and to caption still images from the episode. In the following days,

The Vampire Diaries Facebook page would post “Re#ash” webisodes that recapped the episode and featured selected viewer tweets and captions (Connor 2015, 83).2

Furthermore, The CW website now featured a Social Directory page, which functioned like an address book of the network, program, and cast’s social media accounts (Connor

2015, 83). The Social Directory guided viewers to post, follow, and share while using official hashtags, tagging the show and celebrities’ accounts. Moreover, through the

Social Directory, The CW connected directly to actors’ personal social media accounts, portraying them as an extension of The CW universe. The WB had tied its brand to the

2 The CW’s latest Dare to Defy campaign remains on-going since 2016 and an in-depth account of its digital strategies has not yet been attempted. I do not compare The CW and Netflix’s contemporaneous strategies here. 49 hip, young actors featured in its shows in order to mark itself as aspirational and desirable. With the Social Directory, The CW could even more smoothly collapse the allure of celebrities into the CW brand.

Figure 1.1: The CW’s Social Directory page during the TV Now campaign. (Author’s screenshot from retired CW website page.)

As a precedent to Netflix from the early 2010s, The CW introduces key themes in social media promotion to teens that carry through to Netflix. First, The CW demonstrates how social media has been used to connect audiences to the netlet, framing them as members and contributors to the brand. Second, The CW demonstrates how teen- oriented media services can draw on celebrities’ social media presence to further bolster the brand. As we shall see, Netflix treats celebrities and audiences alike as friends, effectively blending its presence into audiences’ media attachments. Third, The CW’s

50 extensive use of social media—put differently, its use of outlets external to its service— to attract audiences point to how important audience construction occurs outside of a given television platform. Finally, external services have become a key site where the television industry can manage and channel audiences’ interactions with their media properties.

CW Femininity and Channeling Fan Activity

Focusing on sex appeal and technology in its branding, to some extent The CW threw out the conservative edge of The WB, amping up the sex, drugs, and alcohol. Most significantly, The CW “chose to embrace and celebrate the taboo dimensions of teen experience, including teen sexuality and most especially female teen sexuality” (Stein

2015, 87). However, The CW has also tended to dispose of otherwise socially progressive storylines. In particular, scholars have criticized The CW for problematic postfeminist depictions of women and for the substitution of racially diverse characters and multicultural themes for decontextualized colorblind casting. For example, Lausch scrutinizes the damaging construction of a “CW Woman,” whose “universally thin, conventionally beautiful, feminine, and fashionably dressed” body is her greatest asset, and who needs to consume the latest beauty products and fashion to maintain it (2013,

91–95). As Connor notes, The CW’s use of social media actively channels fan activity to reinforce standards of CW femininity. Vampire Diaries Re#ash webisodes privileged fan interpretations that subscribed to heteronormative standards. References to fan tweets 51 “ignore transformative fandom’s interest in popular homosexual fan pairings like

Damon/Alaric. Re#ash participates in the female gaze by fetishizing the attractive male bodies of the show, but never the female ones: Damon is ‘hot’ and ‘sexy,’ but Elena is

‘beautiful’ and ‘pretty’” (Connor 2015, 84). This use of the Re#ash demonstrates how social media can include fans, but also moderate and channel fan activity into the form most acceptable or profitable for The CW.

In addition to constructing postfeminist and traditionally feminine models of femininity, The CW also eliminated shows with black casts or racially specific topics in programs. UPN had several successful African American sitcoms that transitioned to

The CW, but by 2009 The CW had cancelled all of them in order to focus on “more female-focused dramas” (Lausch 2013, 31–33; Murphy 2008, 21–22; Hibberd 2009).

Wilks (2019) argues that The CW’s brand of wealth and sex appeal is based on distinctly white dominant ideals.

Notably, the CW has been shifting both its target audience and its approach to diversity, though the results of these developments are yet to be seen. Since 2011, The

CW’s new president Mark Pedowitz has acknowledged attempts to capture a more adult and gender-neutral audience and programming has notably shifted to include many superhero properties (Connor 2015, 72–75). Meanwhile, in 2019 The CW fashioned its

Dare to Defy slogan into a “We Defy” inclusion and representation initiative (Perilstein

2019). These shifts require further investigation into the way they may continue to uphold damaging, postfeminist, white-oriented beauty standards, and visibility without in depth storylines about diversity. The CW’s use of social media to reify CW femininities is 52 particularly pertinent to the follow discussion of Freeform, and later exploration of

Netflix. Despite industry-wide movement toward greater inclusivity and representation, both linear television and streaming platforms continue to provide a narrow version of diversity.

The Freeform Girl: Branding ABC Family and Freeform

Freeform, known as ABC Family from 2001 to 2016, was informed by the strategies and successes of both The WB and The CW. Disney acquired the channel in 2001 and in

2004, ABC Family began to publicly discuss a target audience of 12–34-year-olds, focusing on women (Murphy 2014, 19; Selznick 2018, 222).To reach teen audiences initially, ABC Family experimented with the syndication of WB series, including 7th

Heaven (1996–2007), Gilmore Girls (2000–2007), and Smallville (2001–2011).

Moreover, as ABC Family began to produce more original series from the late 2000s and on, the channel consistently worked with executives, showrunners, and creative studios who had been successful at The WB or The CW (Murphy 2014, 20–21). Notably, ABC

Family’s most successful and representative original production from the 2010s, Pretty

Little Liars (2010–2017), was developed in partnership with Alloy, a book publisher who also worked with The CW on Gossip Girl and Vampire Diaries (Murphy 2014, 20–21).

Some scholars have suggested that ABC Family is The WB’s successor

(Hochhalter 2013; Donatelle 2014). Much like The WB, ABC Family embraced female

53 empowerment as a central tenet. Throughout the 2010s, the majority of series ABC

Family continued The WB’s legacy of girl power by featuring teen girl protagonists who are “confident, assertive, and goal-driven...capable agents of change in the environments they inhabit” (Murphy 2014, 28). However, ABC Family was not simply a WB copy.

Whereas The CW focused more on young professional women throughout the 2010s,

ABC Family established a brand that could appeal to both teens and their parents.

Furthermore, ABC Family/Freeform went beyond the CW social media strategies previously explored in this chapter to construct a greater intimacy with audiences.

ABC Family’s Millennials and Freeform’s Becomers: Defining an Audience

Between 2006 and 2007, ABC Family conducted demographic research that would establish its brand identity through the mid-2010s. ABC Family published some of their findings in an Advertising Age “Getting to Know the Millennials” feature, which would introduce and sell their target demographic to advertisers (Murphy 2014, 22). This research and findings were met with scholarly skepticism. After all, “Getting to Know the

Millennials” numbered the millennial generation as 83 million, born between 1977 and

1996, “which does not literally match any demographers’ estimates on millennials, but did serve to identify ABC Family’s primary target as 12–30-year-olds in 2007” (Murphy

2014, 22). Thus, much like The WB and The CW’s audiences, ABC Family’s

54 “Millennials,” though ostensibly linked to a demographic, are a flexible category of audiences who can relate to the characteristics attributed to them.

The “Millennial” characteristics ABC Family identified appear particularly self- serving in the way they link to the values of ABC Family’s corporate family. Disney and

ABC share an emphasis on an optimistic not disruptive worldview, and family values

(Stein 2010, 133). Reflecting this emphasis, ABC Family demographic research found that “Millennials” care about family and respect their parents above all, a finding executives publicized broadly. ABC Family president from 2004–2010, Paul Lee, described ABC Family’s audience as “optimistic,” adding that “most importantly they love family, which is great for our name and for the brand…They may define family differently—it’s not Ozzie and Harriet, but rather a much messier, more passionate, more fun, more real family” (quoted Selznick 2018, 222). Likewise, senior VP of marketing for

ABC Family John Rood claimed “it wasn’t that America’s young adults had a problem with family; it is that they had a problem with family television—specifically the stereotypical conservative, boring or insincere aspects of family television” (quoted Stein

2010, 134).

Noticeably, Lee and Rood’s statements manage the conflict between family values and young audiences, who are often understood as wanting to break away from their parents and tradition. Compromising between the two, the channel formulated a plan to become “the go-to destination for an audience that seemed to merge the safety of family values with the edginess of youth culture” (Stein 2015, 27). The result was that

ABC Family magnifies The WB’s formula for creating sweet protagonists who, for all 55 their youthful, edgy energy, ultimately respect rules and their parents. Unlike their rule- breaking CW counterparts, ABC Family heroines are good girls (Donatelle 2014).

Hollywood Reporter described flagship ABC Family series Pretty Little Liars (2010–

2017) as “at once spooky and steamy, but chaste enough for its 8pm time slot. It’s like

Gossip Girl with a curfew” (quoted Selznick 2018, 223).

As the original age group ABC Family targeted aged up and a newer generation entered their teen years, ABC Family reexamined their audience strategy and ultimately relaunched the channel under the name Freeform in 2016. Freeform, like ABC Family, struggled to reconcile family values and a youthful sensibility. New president Tom

Ascheim shared market research in which viewers associated the ABC Family brand with the terms “wholesome” or “family-friendly,” and described this finding as a “road-block” or “perception gap” because the brand should be understood as younger, and active on social media (Selznick 2018, 223; Andreeva 2015). Alongside launching the name

Freeform, the network named their revised audience, now conceiving of them as

“Becomers.” This term was meant to encapsulate, as Ascheim put it, young people in the life stage “from your first kiss to your first kid,” rather than a fixed generation (Selznick

2018, 219).

Emily Newman and Emily Witsell argue Freeform keeps the focus on young characters experiencing major first life experiences, but is sexier, edgier, and less family- oriented than ABC Family, exploring “increasingly adult themes, including murder, scandal, sex, and trauma” (2018, 3). However, despite its branding makeover, Freeform has not fully shed the family image. In the announcement of the new name, Ascheim 56 stated “the idea is to center on young people but include families as becomers have families,” whereas Cox-Hagan claimed that “the Freeform brand will be very much nestled in the Disney ethos—full of optimism and imagination” (Andreeva 2015). Disney has constructed its various brands, from Disney Jr. to Freeform, as a pipeline able to hold children’s interest as they grow and mature. Indeed, establishing linkages between

Disney brands, Freeform runs Disney Channel programs and Freeform stars prominently promote Disney material on their social media (Selznick 2018, 226). A close association with the Disney ethos impairs the Freeform brand’s ability to pursue the more taboo and troubling aspects of young life and Freeform ultimately offers “safe,” “clean” content that parents can watch with their teens without cause for discomfort. Though taking a different approach from The CW, Freeform established a cross-demographic audience for its “teen” brand.

Speaking as Their Friend: Freeform’s Social Media Strategies

Also like The CW, ABC Family/Freeform’s developed extensive second-screen strategies during the late 2010s. For instance, in 2007, ABC Family redesigned their website to emphasize social networking and user-generated content. In the early 2010s, in parallel to

The CW, ABC Family relied more and more on social media rather than its own website to engage audience with paratexts, scavenger hunts, and contests (Gillan 2014, 10–13).

Then, in 2016, the Freeform name connected the network explicitly to the online world,

57 which Ascheim stated was a priority. Senior vice president of marketing, creative, and branding, Nigel Cox-Hagan, claimed that “Freeform” symbolized the flexible flow of media content from platform to platform and that viewers were encouraged to participate

(Andreeva 2015; Selznick 2018, 224). Thus, the Freeform name links both to digital spaces and to viewers seen as creators of meaning.

A major form of digital engagement that ABC Family/Freeform encouraged in audiences was aspiring to look like the network’s celebrities. Anna Donatelle (2014) argues that the Pretty Little Liars Facebook page is “a one-stop-shop for young women to learn about fashion trends, [and] how to be feminine both in looks and behavior” (32).

Posts on the Facebook page include videos with costume designer Mandi Line. Some videos feature a fashion lesson, like teaching viewers how to mix prints, while others have Line describing a character’s look and how fans might achieve a similar style (51,

55). According to Donatelle, these videos suggest that dressing like Pretty Little Liars protagonists will allow audiences to embody the character’s personality, which Donatelle interprets as “a perfect example of the post-feminist ideological construction of young, female empowerment through the body and power through consumption practices” (53).

Continuing to build up the importance of beauty, the Pretty Little Liars Facebook page reshared Instagram posts from the stars, both from the set of the show or from the stars’ personal life (Donatelle 2014, 42). ABC Family added comments to reposts, such as “How cute is Janel?! We love this selfie she took last night!!”, “Troian is gorgeous!”, and “How cute are these two?!” (2014, 45). Donatelle contends that these captions,

58 frequently focusing on appearance, constituted actors’ social media accounts and the

ABC Family Facebook page as “sites of aspirational beauty” (2014, 45).

The network’s use of the star’s everyday life (as constructed on social media) is also significant in the way it suggests an intimacy between celebrities, the network, and audiences who visit social media. Going further than The CW’s Social Directory, which merely linked to celebrities’ social media accounts, ABC Family/Freeform embedded their stars’ social media presence into its own social media accounts. ABC

Family/Freeform thereby suggested that celebrities and audiences coexist within the same everyday world. Further, the language, gushing and with excessive punctuation, positioned the Pretty Little Liars Facebook page as a fellow young fan of the stars.

ABC Family/Freeform’s strategy to copy the language and excitement of fans is a major forerunner to Netflix’s efforts to establish bonds with audiences. Jennifer Gillan

(2014) notes that long before ABC Family employed such strategies, The WB’s

Dawson’s Creek website included personal journals from the main characters, treating the characters as real “friends on Capeside” to catch up with and confide in, instead of fictional characters (14). ABC Family uses stars rather than characters as a proxy to encourage not only a friendly connection between audiences and stars, but also between the audiences and the network. Marketing exec Mullin has explained that the Pretty Little

Liars team used social media as a “friend” to their fans, avoiding both posting only between 9 and 5 and using a corporate tone (Gillan 2014, 14). According to Mullin,

Pretty Little Liars audiences “actually do think they’re speaking to their friend” on social media (quoted Gillan 2014, 14). This intimate form of address has important 59 ramifications when taking into account how it naturalizes the norms of consumable, fashionable, and beautiful femininity apparent in ABC Family’s social media.

Attaining Perfect Looks: Diversity, Women, and the ABC Family/Freeform Brand

In general, ABC Family kept closer to The WB’s model of liberal humanism. The aforementioned Advertising Age “Getting to Know Millennials” article found 45% of their target audience refer to themselves as non-white (Murphy 2014, 22). Further, the article identified multiculturalism and social consciousness as one of the most important facets of “Millennial” identity (22). As a result, from early on the network’s programming reflected “greater diversity in race, ethnicity and sexual orientation than broadcast prime-time programming as a whole during this time” (22). Multiple scholars note that shows like Pretty Little Liars and Switched at Birth (2011–2017) allowed for frank and direct discussion that transgressed some traditional norms (Murphy 2014, 24;

Stein 2010, 133; Jennifer Mitchell 2015).

However, the activist and multicultural orientation attributed to young people was in conflict with the “the more conservative qualities...associated with its Disney and ABC corporate lineage” (Stein 2010, 133). The corporate brand of Disney prefers optimistic rather than confrontational narratives. Thus, ABC Family curtails complex depictions of ongoing structures of power in favor of characters who resolve tensions arising from difference through their confidence and self-belief. Many scholars point out this limitation to ABC diverse programming (Stein 2010; Hochhalter 2013; Brown 2015; 60 Peters 2016). As Murphy states, in early ABC Family original programming “difference is visible, but the significance of difference and its meaningful operation in society is rarely, if ever, acknowledged” (2014, 25).

ABC Family’s focus on believing in oneself has been examined by scholars in relation to depictions of gender as well. ABC Family and Freeform have emphasized girl power and female empowerment in their programming. However, Murphy excoriates

ABC Family series for “imagining a world in which young women are only inhibited by their own ambition” (2014, 29). As touched on previously, Donatelle expands on the problematic nature of this world view, especially as deployed on ABC Family’s social media. Flattening difference to the level of an individual’s personal challenge, which can be overcome through attaining the standards of beauty set by a white, middle-class society, ABC Family lumped all “Millennials” into “one large, consumerist family”

(Donatelle 2014, 37).

Throughout the 2010s, ABC Family showed signs of deepening and complicating its depictions of diversity (Hochhalter 2013; Kohnen 2015; Newman and Witsell 2018).

This development can be understood in association with the Freeform relaunch in 2016.

Freeform’s move away from being a family brand, and attention to the values of younger generations, likely has opened up room for more robust multicultural representations, though this conjecture necessitates further exploration, much like The CW’s We Defy campaign. In the late 2010s, the filmed entertainment industry as a whole appeared to prioritize an expansion of depictions of diversity and feminism, but limitations already evident in the first half of the decade continue to hamper the level of inclusivity offered. 61 Conclusion

Netflix has positioned itself as separate from and disruptive of linear television, but as illustrated in this chapter, not much of what Netflix does is new. Much like Netflix’s model for audience targeting, narrowcasting has in the past gone beyond targeting a single demographic. To a degree, teen television brands are not really about teen audiences after all. WB executives believed that if a show was popular with younger people, older people would be drawn to it. The WB marketing president Lew Goldstein stated in 1999 that “When you get the teens, it gives a show that plasma it needs. It buys time for the adults to find it, too” (quoted Kearney 2007, 27). However, teens were not the primary audience The WB wanted to capture for advertisers. Also in 1999 Bob Bibb,

The WB’s other marketing president, claimed they were very proud to “have not closed the door to women 18–34” (quoted Kearney 2007, 29).

In parallel, The CW’s Gossip Girl initially struggled with adult women, but won its timeslot for teen demographics, despite the fact that the network had discounted teens from reports of its target demographic (Lausch 2013, 35). The CW’s success with teens prompted media attention and contributed to a buzz factor for its shows, eventually drawing older women to the network (Lausch 2013, 35). Reflecting decades-long industry belief and practices, the cultivation of a youthful brand and direct appeals to teens can be strategically deployed as a steppingstone to enticing older viewers. Read in this context, Netflix’s ambiguity regarding who the intended audiences for teen programs on the platform are seems neither unfamiliar nor incongruous with historical practices in

62 linear television. Building on these insights about niche television brands’ balancing of appeals to broad and more narrowly defined audiences, the next chapter addresses

Netflix’s reluctance to name teens as a target demographic.

Moreover, in the 2010s, The CW and Freeform developed a teen brand and engaged teen audiences online as a bid for wider relevancy and cultural cachet, a method that Netflix also appears to draw on. When ratings were falling in 2009, The CW emphasized the popularity of programs on social media instead. Then-president Ostroff declared, “The buzz The CW generates transcends television. It has become part of the fabric of pop culture.” (Hibberd 2009). Ostroff’s grandiose conclusion here reflects how television has made the case for engagement as it loses viewership via linear consumption. The CW’s various slogans and monikers throughout the 2010s, like “TV

To Talk About” and “addicTV,” insist on The CW’s relevancy based on producing digital conversations. Similarly, Freeform appealed to advertisers about their relevancy through creating social media buzz and also gathered and shared valuable data from social media about how viewers responded to commercials (Gillan 2014, 258). The next chapter examines how Netflix deploys its relationship to teen audiences to generate buzz, though its goals differed due to its subscription-based model. Rather than attempting to attract and retain sponsors, Netflix has selectively shared data about this trend-setting audience to maintain its reputation as a popular brand while not releasing actual viewership numbers.

63 Chapter 2 “Phenomenal” Social Media Activity: Netflix Messaging Around Teen Programming

Though in investor reports Netflix does not discuss its pursuit of a teen demographic in any depth, trade journals and media critics have observed a substantial effort on Netflix’s part to invest in teen-oriented programming. Articles dating back to 2016 announced a

“major shift in Netflix’s programming” from “adult-oriented series like House of Cards and Orange is the New Black” to young adult programming (Thomas 2018). The subsequent release of shows like 13 Reasons Why (2017–), The Chilling Adventures of

Sabrina (2018–), On My Block (2018–), and Elite (2018–), as well as films such as To All the Boys (2018) and Kissing Booth (2018), led numerous news outlets to conclude that

Netflix is “cornering the market on coming-of-age shows” and that “teens own Netflix”

(Thomas 2018; Berman 2019). Thus, despite Netflix’s portrayal of itself as not interested in a teenage demographic (or any demographic) to industry insiders, and despite overwhelming industry and scholarly rhetoric that Netflix targets audiences differently from traditional networks and channels, trade and journalistic discourse points to continuities between Netflix and teen-oriented linear television.

Netflix’s programming strategy has been compared directly to The CW’s efforts to build a teen sensibility. A 2019 Decider article argued that shows like The Order

(2019–) and The Society (2019–) contributed to a Netflix slate that perfectly recreated

The CW’s brand of teen shows within Netflix itself (Cobb 2019). Licensed CW content was already very prominently featured on Netflix and CW series like Riverdale have 64 been strongly associated with Netflix.3 In 2017, Netflix acquired rights to The Chilling

Adventures of Sabrina, a companion series to Riverdale that The CW had been developing (Andreeva 2017) and in the following years, Netflix has picked up other series initially intended for The CW, like Insatiable (2018–2019). Thus, Decider’s conclusion that Netflix is mimicking The CW in its acquisitions and programming strategies is not unfounded.

Of course, Netflix has aggressively pursued and developed all sorts of content throughout the 2010s, not just programming that appeals specifically to teens. What is interesting here is that Netflix earning reports regularly herald the popularity of programming that happens to have a teen orientation, leading mainstream media outlets to speculate that teens are the service’s “most profitable niche” and that Netflix “may conclude that it’s good business to…abandon us geezers over 30” (Berman 2019). But,

Netflix does not identify teens as a critical constituency. In fact, the streaming service avoids labeling the profitable series mentioned in earning reports as teen-oriented.

Netflix’s public-facing communications almost never mention teen or young adult demographics.

Making sense of Netflix’s contradictory statements, this chapter examines how

Netflix publicly and intra-industrially presents itself as engaging with the teen-oriented content that it features. I ask under which contexts the demographics of audiences seem to matter more or less for the streaming platform. In most public-facing documents and

3 Trade journals credit Netflix with making Riverdale popular after its first season landed on the service in 2017, leading to “jaw-dropping” ratings for The CW’s season 2 premiere (Adalian 2017). 65 communications, Netflix finds it valuable not to highlight its tailoring to teen audiences because doing so would diminish the potential for the larger appeal of such content or lead to devaluations of the Netflix brand.

In particular, when discussing its programming decisions or the platform itself to industry and press, Netflix claims to seek a broad audience and maintains that it does not use demographic-based targeting. On the surface, these evasions distinguish Netflix’s platform and programming from cable’s audience strategy. As discussed in the previous chapter, The WB, The CW, and Freeform strongly associate themselves with a single demographic to form their brand, whereas Netflix evades a demographic-based identity.

However, as we have seen, dating back to The WB in the ‘90s, a cultivation of a teen sensibility attracted as big as possible audiences to “teen” networks. Similarly, Netflix positions movies and shows featuring teens for general audiences.

Through a survey of various engagements that Netflix has had with the press regarding its teen-oriented programming as well as the service’s intra-industry reports and interviews from 2016 through 2019, I found that Netflix often conveys that the viewers of its teen programming either are part of larger family units or are in fact adults, not teens. Ted Sarandos and various executives working under him imply that having more content in the category of kids and family viewing, as a whole—so that families can watch together—is more important than specifically teen viewers. Meanwhile, Netflix press releases related to teen-oriented shows and movies imagine the value of their programming for adult audiences, using a rhetoric of inclusivity and female empowerment. Not reliant on sponsorships or advertising partnerships, Netflix does not 66 need to highlight the appeal of its service to teens specifically. Instead, in the interest of growing its subscriber base, Netflix works to portray the general appeal of its programming and service for everyone.

Netflix divorced teen-oriented content from its referent teen demographic in other contexts too. When addressing investors and the press, Netflix lauded shows and films featuring teens to demonstrate Netflix’s wider cultural relevance as a hip, relevant trend- setter—without acknowledging that the programming mentioned appeals to teen demographics. With over 100 million subscribers in the late 2010s, Netflix has not had to combat the perception that it is not profitable due to falling ratings like The CW did.

However, establishing itself as a producer, not just a distributor, throughout the 2010s, the service has instead faced criticism that its brand is weak (Frank 2018; Adalian 2018b;

Carson 2018; Wallenstein 2019). A close analysis of Netflix investor reports reveals that in addition to pursuing notable awards and accolades in the industry, Netflix has increasingly combatted negative narratives about its brand by publicizing teens’ social media activity. At the same time, Netflix maintained perceptions of its brand as appealing to everyone, avoiding too close an association with actual teens, who are often seen as a lower quality or less valuable audience in the eyes of industry insiders and investors.

Yet, despite the majority of Netflix discourses that suggest the company does not target teens, there are places where such targeting is evident, such as in social media feeds or select asides directed to teen demographics. How Netflix promotes content specifically to teens is explored in more depth in the next chapters, but here I examine

Netflix’s participation in the teen-oriented convention VidCon to demonstrate the 67 contradictions in how teen audiences factor in Netflix executives’ discussions of the platform itself and its original programming, as opposed to in marketing materials.

Parsing these various Netflix communications, I complicate understandings of how the company does or does not make use of audience demographics.

The first part of this chapter examines the regularly communicated stance for

Netflix, maintained by Sarandos and others through intra-industry reports and interviews, that Netflix does not target demographics. The second and third parts of the chapter consider the statements that Netflix content executives gave to the press as well as the marketing team’s press releases, to show how Netflix draws on family-friendly and diversity/empowerment appeals to characterize teen-oriented programming as drawing broad audiences. I juxtapose these statements with Netflix’s marketing efforts to bring in teen viewers in particular. The last part of this chapter will address how, rather than speaking in terms of ratings, Netflix employs indicators like social media engagement and internet traffic to illustrate the value of Netflix as a powerful cultural influence.

“There’s no such thing as a ‘Netflix show’”: A Streaming Service for Everyone

When Netflix renewed its licensing deal with The CW in 2016, Chief Content Officer

Ted Sarandos told investors that The CW “produce programming that has a very consistent sensibility, and a very consistent fan base, and that fit really nicely with the big viewing demographic on Netflix” (Thomson Reuters Street Events 2016a). Sarandos did

68 not elaborate further on what sort of sensibility or demographic he was discussing. The statement suggests that Sarandos was thinking about audiences in terms of demographics to some extent, yet he declined to acknowledge teens directly as central to The CW’s sensibility or as a target group for Netflix. The words teen or young adult almost never appear in Netflix investor reports, despite frequent mentions of the noteworthy viewership of teen-oriented programming like 13 Reasons and To All the Boys. Mentions of other audience constituencies also rarely occur.

Netflix does not like investors to think that it licenses or produces programming explicitly targeted for one specific audience niche. In a quarterly investment call in 2017, when asked if Netflix should be thought of as a television network, Sarandos protested that Netflix was more like a super network, “addressing content desires and needs across the board…not programming for one niche, which networks tend to do” (Thomson

Reuters 2017a). Sarandos repeatedly emphasized “breadth of genres” and “doing more for all tastes” when discussing content additions because according to him, “the more content that we’re adding, the more likely you’re going to land on a show that somebody can’t live without” (Thomson Reuters 2016a).

Examining industry conversation and statements to press from 2016 through

2019, this section explores how and why Netflix positioned itself as serving a broad audience in terms of its approach to demographics, but also emphasized personalization and customization. Such rhetoric is most evident in executives’ emphasis of “taste clusters” on the Netflix platform itself (Adalian 2018a). Taste clusters, also called taste

69 communities, are a term Netflix’s product team uses to describe a collection of media properties that a subset of users have all watched on Netflix.4

Netflix deploys taste communities discursively in a way that downplays the demographic-related identities of audiences. As the story goes, Netflix Vice President of

Product Todd Yellin used to ask customers to provide their age and gender back when

Netflix was a DVD rental service in order to predict their future DVD orders. However, he found that viewing history was a much better predictor of what they would later order.

In Yellin’s words, “hit play once and it tells us volumes more than knowing you’re a 31- year-old woman or a 72-year-old man or a 19-year-old guy” (Adalian 2018a). Similarly,

Yellin recounted that Netflix would make recommendations based on the nation and region of subscribers, but “we find that to be greater and greater nonsense, and we are disproving it every day” (Rodriguez 2017). Instead, Netflix claimed to prefer their taste clusters.

Though without access to Netflix’s proprietary info I cannot address how taste clusters construct audiences in detail, it is important to note that these statements function to differentiate Netflix’s strategy from those of legacy networks—and make Netflix seem better than the rest. As a Netflix spokesperson said, “what members actually watch and

4 Vulture journalist Josef Adalian’s visit to Netflix offices in 2018 provides an edifying example of how Netflix appears to utilize taste clusters. A manager on Netflix’s product team demonstrated in a PowerPoint presentation that initial viewers of Black Mirror were often fans of Groundhog Day and Lost, leading the product team to associate Black Mirror with cluster 290, which includes programming with supernatural worlds. Likewise, Black Mirror viewers tended to be fans of dark dramas found in cluster 56, like Shameless, Orphan Black, and The OA (Adalian 2018a). When subscribers show interest in Black Mirror, Netflix can recommend any other show from the clusters it was sorted into. Conversely, if users have already shown interest in multiple properties from clusters 290 and/or 56, the service may recommend Black Mirror in particular. Generally, Netflix associates three to five clusters with each account to inform recommendations. In late 2018, Netflix’s product team had identified about 2,000 clusters (Barrett 2016). 70 do on the service transcends the predictions of stereotypical demographics” (Rodriguez

2017), and by extension, transcends the capabilities of linear television. Furthermore, though Netflix maintains the difference between its audience targeting and targeting based on demographics, users have reported feeling as though they are being targeted by race on the service (Zarum 2018). Netflix claims they do not collect user data about the race of users, so it could not have intentionally shown Black users customized thumbnails of content featuring Black actors—even when these actors had small roles. Netflix explained that it customizes based on viewing history: the thumbnails showed Black actors for accounts that showed interest in content featuring Black actors. However, even if this is the case, the streaming service presumed that users have racial biases and used race as a categorizing heuristic. As Safiya Noble (2018) and others have noted, algorithms are written by humans, whose assumptions pervade the code they write. Thus,

I find it likely that Netflix’s methods are functionally much closer to the “nonsense” demographics of linear television than the platform would like it to seem.

When discussing decision-making processes for programming, Sarandos is prone to making comments similar to Yellin’s. According to Sarandos, “It’s just as likely that a

75-year-old man in Denmark likes Riverdale as my teenage kids” (Adalian 2018a).

However, Sarandos was rather self-contradictory when it comes to audience targeting throughout his statements in investor reports from 2016–2019. On one hand, Sarandos singled out a few content categories that appear to be of particular importance to Netflix because they reach a specific audience demographic. On the other hand, Sarandos doubled back to reiterate the broad appeal of this demographic-related content. The 71 inconsistencies in Sarandos’s statements suggest that demographics might matter in certain cases for Netflix’s programming decisions, but at least discursively, Netflix asserts that they do not rely on them.

Within Netflix’s intra-industry conversations, there are two groups that emerge as demographic-based audience categories: international audiences, constructed on the basis of geography, and kids, constructed on the basis of age. I discuss international audiences first. Netflix discursively constructs a number of distinct national or regional audiences

(e.g., those in Latin America, Europe, and Asia). This discursive strategy is aligned with

Netflix’s more general globalization efforts. Since 2016, Netflix has expanded its service to most global regions and emphasized establishing itself those markets (Lobato 2019).

According to Sarandos, many of Netflix’s local productions “don’t particularly travel”

(Thomson Reuters 2018a). Thus, Netflix has emphasized local language production that is “hyper-local in the topic” to capture specific audiences and garner an alleged “40%,

50% penetration” in a local market (Thomson Reuters 2018a). Sarandos argues, for instance, that Netflix has been “maybe was less known in India” and thus producing localized programming made Netflix “feel more local, more relevant” (Thomson Reuters

2018b) to Indian audiences. Thus, Netflix sometimes differentiates and constitutes audiences by territories.

Likewise, Netflix consistently separates their youngest audiences from the rest.

As early as 2016, Sarandos boasted that Netflix’s programming for kids had led to

Kidscreen voting the service “the number one outlet for kids programming on television”

(Thomson Reuters 2016a). Over the course of the next few years, Sarandos pointed out 72 specific content designed for children even as other releases remained undifferentiated by audience. For instance, a 2018 shareholder letter announces that “in original kids programming, Boss Baby: Back in Business became one of our biggest kids series ever.”

Meanwhile, other series meant to highlight Netflix’s “diversity of programming” are clumped together, collectively identified simply as originals: “we released the second season of one of our biggest originals 13 Reasons Why, as well as Santa Clarita Diet, A

Series of Unfortunate Events, Marvel’s Jessica Jones, La Casa de Papel (Money Heist),

GLOW and Marvel’s Luke Cage” (Netflix 2018b). The attention given in particular to children is further reflected in Netflix’s corporate structure. In 2017, Netflix hired

Melissa Cobb in the newly created position of Vice President of Kids and Family, reporting directly to Chief Content Officer Ted Sarandos (Netflix PR 2017b). Most executives reporting to Sarandos are in charge of general formats, like VP of Original

Series, not of audience sectors. Thus, Netflix demonstrably distinguishes a group of audience members by age.

There are several reasons for Netflix to prioritize and highlight children but not most other types of viewers. I argue these reasons are analogous to Netflix’s reasons for emphasizing unscripted series (in addition to international local productions and kids’ content). As stated to investors in 2016, Netflix’s concerted effort in producing original unscripted content stems from a concern that their sources of licensed unscripted programming have become reluctant “to sell their content off of their own universe because many of the episodes seem to be interchangeable” (Thomson Reuters Street

Events 2016b). In other words, Netflix anticipated a pressing lack of future opportunities 73 to make second window streaming deals for unscripted content. A few years later in

2018, Sarandos discussed with investors a strategy of “backfilling things that are coming off the site” and lauded the company’s success with launching original unscripted programs to fill a potential gap in content (Thomson Reuters Street Events 2018c).

Though Netflix did not describe kids programming in these terms, it is very likely that early on Netflix identified similar concerns and pursued a backfiling strategy with kids programming. Coming to this conclusion, a New York Times article suggested

Netflix’s aggressive investment in kids content had to do with Disney+’s launching, as

Netflix lost a major source of licensed kids’ content and gained a formidable competitor for families’ budget for streaming services (Barnes 2019). And, kids and family programming appeared to be important to most Netflix users: Vice President of Kids and

Family Melissa Cobb stated that 60 percent of accounts watch kids and family programming each month (Barnes 2019). Furthermore, in an interview with the New York

Times, Sarandos suggested that kids and family content was important for building loyalty to the Netflix brand and as a steady source of subscription renewals. He stated, “If you start looking at what people watch and why—the ways that people build habits and build trust—shows and movies for children and families are incredibly important to us”

(Barnes 2019).

However, even as Sarandos has spoken to Netflix’s pursuit of particular audiences such as these based on geography and age, Sarandos also consistently delimited the importance of national/regional and young audience groups within investor materials and other intra-industry communications. Often, in a single conversation, Sarandos both 74 elevated and diminished the importance of a specific audience group. In one discussion with investors about international productions, Sarandos first recounted that the topics of some international programming are so local that they are only relevant to local audiences and that they are deployed with the interest of capturing a specific local audience. Then, Sarandos circled back to emphasize Netflix’s local content has immense global appeal because “the more authentically local the show is, the better it travels”

(Thomson Reuters 2019b). As a result, Sarandos suggested that, overall, Netflix’s strategy with local programming may capture a local niche, but more importantly it attracted broad audiences across borders with its cultural authenticity.

Similarly, Netflix suggested that kids’ material is important not because of child viewers but because it serves a broad audience made up of both kids and parents. As

Sarandos told investors in 2016 after uplifting the success of Netflix kids’ content,

“We’re also looking to [add] programming that are watched together. Parents watching a show that their kids love…it’s a real underserved market” (Thomson Reuters 2016a).

Sarandos reiterated the emphasis on family viewing within kids programming the following year as well (among other times), this time specifying that when acquiring or developing kids and family programming, “the really exciting thing is when you get something that can be viewed by both…where it’s a kid’s show that parents enjoy watching and that don’t get—they don’t have to cringe when they wa[tch] with their kids” (Thomson Reuters 2017a). Here, Sarandos elevated the crossover programming which can capture both kids and their parents as the most “exciting” out of the material that might bring in younger audiences. Evoking the family viewing model of the classic 75 network era, Sarandos pushed against the nicheing norm of cable and suggested Netflix has a mass orientation.5

Thus, in industry conversation and statements to press, Netflix suggested the importance of age and geographical location in the appeal of their programming, but the company consistently balanced the interests of one audience with those of another, avoiding pigeonholing the Netflix brand into appealing to one type of show or one type of audience. Sarandos has said, “I don’t want any of our shows to define our brand, and I don’t want our brand to define any shows. There’s no such thing as a ‘Netflix show’”

(Adalian 2018a).

Deemed irrelevant in discourse about taste communities on Netflix’s product side and addressed only as a part of a more significant whole on Netflix’s content side, the demographics of Netflix’s viewership are made to appear to be almost inconsequential to

Netflix’s business model. The fervor with which Netflix avoids identifying with any single audience differentiates it from cable networks like The CW and Freeform, which build their brand identity from their precise set of assumed viewers and their programming strategy. Netflix does not want a brand as tied to a type of programming, it wants to be all things to all people. Thus, Netflix separates brand from demographics as much as possible when discussing content decisions to industry insiders and press. The

CW and Freeform, on the other hand, tie their brand to a teen demographic or a teen

5 As has been noted, however, family viewing did not completely disappear in the past few decades and has remained a relevant model for teen-oriented niche brands like Freeform to capture broad audiences. 76 sensibility even though, as discussed in the previous chapter, that demographic-related branding has been used to attract a broad audience.

“Shows that Families can Enjoy Together”: How Netflix Characterizes Teen Programming and its Audiences to Press

Reporting on his visit to Netflix offices in late 2018, Vulture writer Adalian recounted that in 2016 Vice President of Original Content Cindy Holland’s team “saw an opportunity to reinvent young-adult dramas; out of that push came last year’s hit 13

Reasons Why and this year’s buzzy coming-of-age comedy On My Block” (Adalian

2018a). In such conversations with journalists, Holland and other executives from the original productions unit consistently positioned young adult series in relation to content targeted toward the whole family. For example, in 2019 The Hollywood Reporter identified Brian Wright as the executive steering Netflix’s push for “young-adult shows”

(Sandberg 2019b). In 2017, however Wright told CNET his main responsibility was to fill “a hole in the TV landscape” with family-friendly content appealing to all ages

(Lancaster 2017). The article further described 13 Reasons, younger-leaning shows like

Green Eggs and Ham, and family sitcom Atypical as part of the same category of “all- ages storytelling” (Lancaster 2017). Thus, the executive at Netflix identified with young adult series has been linked to the broader mantle of kids and family series. Similarly, on the film side, Naketha Mattocks has led a family film unit that is variably referred to as

77 the live-action teen movie unit (Barnes 2019). Such statements from and about Netflix executives has positioned Netflix teen content under the mantle of family programming.

However, Netflix’s deemphasis of teen demographics in industry and journalistic discourse contradicted how Netflix began to promote content specifically to teens in

2016. Netflix’s 2016 attendance of the teen-oriented convention VidCon illustrates these contradictions well. VidCon focuses on online video and has been frequented predominantly by young YouTube creators and their even younger fans. Citing a Variety survey that found YouTube stars are more popular among teens than mainstream celebrities, New York Times reporter Nick Bilton described the 2015 VidCon as “18,000 star-struck frenetic teenagers” descending on Anaheim Convention Center “where they will spend three days running around like total and utter lunatics,” chasing down digital creators that the adults have not even heard of (Bilton 2015). 2016 was the first time

Netflix attended this convention. Providing particular evidence that the service was trying to capture the attention of teens, Netflix announced and promoted two new originals that are patently teen-oriented at VidCon: Haters Back Off, with YouTube star Miranda Sings and Chasing Cameron, an unscripted series with Vine and Awesomeness star Cameron

Dallas (Hamedy 2016; Spangler 2016). To conference attendees, the service appeared to be sending the message that Netflix is for you.

Yet, to press, the company chose to convey the message that their material was aimed toward a broad cross-section of viewers, of which teens were only a modest part.

In an email to the press explaining Netflix’s choice to attend VidCon, Netflix executive

Wright said, “We are really interested in elevating the YA and family space in TV. If you 78 get it right, you don’t limit yourself to one demo—you can get a broad cross-section of kids, teens and adults” (Hamedy 2016). In addition to emphasizing the breadth of options available on the service, such statements also distance Netflix from the potential negative connotations of teen audiences. As the above quotation from the New York Times demonstrated, young girls’ enthusiasm for media has been met with bewilderment at best and more often than not ridicule, from both adults and industry insiders. Michael

Newman and Elana Levine (2012) have argued that teen television has been devalued both because adults take youthful content less seriously and because of its association with the emotional and character-driven plotlines of feminized soap operas. Beginning at least as early as The WB, networks featuring teen content have tried to elevated their offerings by hiring well-regarded directors and screenwriters and using cinematic filming techniques (Wee 2008). Netflix likewise avoided aligning its brand with audiences and formats considered of lower quality.

The company’s messaging to both press and industry insiders about the cross- demographic appeal of teen content has remained consistent since 2016. At the beginning of 2016, Sarandos signaled an approximate starting point to Netflix’s development of material for families. At this time, Sarandos told shareholders that

We are now in our fourth year of original programming and we are putting special

emphasis on shows that families can enjoy together, including the upcoming

Fuller House, new seasons of Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, and Stranger Things.

(Reed and Wells 2016)

79 As the shareholder letter immediately following the show’s first season premiere stated,

Stranger Things “is the kind of broad appeal, cross demographic, and cross border sensation that we hope will distinguish Netflix original content” (Netflix 2016b). Though in conversations with journalist at times Wright discussed Stranger Things as “part of its growing ‘young adult’ roster,” he put the most emphasis on the show’s “validating [the] theory that family content can be great content” (Tiffany 2017). Similarly, the early 2017 release of A Series of Unfortunate Events (2017–2019) gave Wright the chance to repeat his talking points to reporters that television “isn’t offering a lot for families in the scripted space” and that Netflix would make family shows “just as good” as other more adult-oriented originals like House of Cards and Orange is the New Black (Lancaster

2017; Tiffany 2017). Articles covering the Series of Unfortunate Events release tend to group that program together with other older- and younger-skewing projects Netflix was working on in 2017, including Lost in Space, 13 Reasons Why, Atypical, and Green Eggs and Ham. Collectively such shows are situated in the all-ages, cross-generation, family- oriented category (Lancaster 2017; Tiffany 2017) rather than being identified as content targeted to young adults.

Creatives working on teen-oriented programming with Netflix have also discursively prioritized cross-demographic audiences. In early 2018, Netflix won a bidding war for Ryan Murphy’s The Politician, a high-school comedy drama. Though it is possible Netflix simply offered to pay him the most, Murphy told the Hollywood

Reporter that Wright and Holland sold him on giving the show to Netflix because they cited the millions of views “high school-set shows with broader themes” like Stranger 80 Things and 13 Reasons earned on the service. Murphy declared that Netflix “really understood” that he wanted to make “a big, broad, mainstream hit,” not a niche story

(Sandberg 2019b). The Hollywood Reporter also noted, in an article detailing the development of the series, that there was no profanity and nearly no nudity in The

Politician because “it’s designed to be a family show that kids can watch with their parents” (Sandberg 2019b). With this show, as well as many others, writer-producers and

Netflix appeared to align on creating series with young adult characters aimed for broad family audiences as opposed to programs tailored for and targeted explicitly to a teen niche.

While Netflix’s teen television series have been positioned as co-viewing opportunities since 2016, in 2018, Netflix’s teen films had not yet been similarly been tied to the company’s family viewing initiative. Although Netflix released several movies focused on teenagers’ experiences in summer of 2018—including To All the Boys,

Kissing Booth, and Sierra Burgess is a Loser—these films were linked together in Netflix press releases with other romcoms featuring older, twentysomething characters, rather than being tied to a teen demographic (Netflix 2018e). Likewise, after reporting on the release of The Perfect Date (2019) and calling it a “young adult romantic comedy movie,” a Netflix shareholder letter appends news about the release of romantic comedy

Always Be My Maybe (Netflix 2019b). Films such as The Perfect Date are made to appear meaningful to investors and journalists in terms of their commonality with the romcom genre rather than due to their targeted appeal on the basis of age. This approach to framing teen films remains in flux, and might change with Netflix’s new family film 81 executive Naketha Mattocks (previously an executive at Disney Channel) set to launch eight “clean teen” films, starting with Tall Girl, released in September 2019 (Barnes

2019).6 Much like its original series, Netflix films containing young adult-oriented material might be treated as family viewing. Still, whether positioned as having appeal for families or for the broader audiences of romcoms, teen-oriented programming is not discussed as being tailored to the specific interests of young, female viewers.

Thus, though media critics have compared Netflix to The CW in terms of their teen programming, the company’s foregrounding of safe family viewing in their industry and press-oriented engagements suggest a comparison with Freeform and Disney

Channel is even more apt. As the previous section discussed, Netflix might prioritize appeals to families because families make up a significant portion of the market for streaming subscriptions and industry analysts say they are steady subscribers month after month, whereas households without children are more likely to cancel and renew at whim

(Barnes 2019). Moreover, highlighting the broad appeal of teen-oriented shows and films, like it did with local productions and kids’ content, Netflix continued to detach the

Netflix brand from any one type of programming and avoided an alignment with an audience constituency seen as less valuable.

6 Reporting on how many Disney Channel executives Netflix had hired by 2019, the New York Times playfully wondered, “Is anyone left at Disney Channel headquarters?” 82 Inspire and Empower Young Women: Netflix Press Releases for Teen Content

Despite Netflix’s general family-friendly rhetoric, a significant portion of Netflix originals featuring teens might cause parents to “cringe when watching with their children.” Shows like Elite, End of the F---ing World, and Chilling Adventures of Sabrina depict racy situations, violence, and teens drinking, using drugs, and generally misbehaving. Such shows seem to match the “consistent sensibility” of The CW

Sarandos found to “fit really nicely” with Netflix audiences. Presumably, Netflix’s freedom from content and language restrictions could be a competitive advantage for producing originals featuring teens that are different from those available on linear television. Additionally, due to the values its corporate family, Disney+ is likely to stick to “clean” and “safe” content, whereas Netflix can be more edgy. Indeed, seeming to contradict the majority of Netflix statements from 2016–2019, in a 2020 panel that brought up competition with Disney+, Wright stated that Disney+ is “in the family space,” but Netflix is on “the more provocative side” when it comes to television series featuring teens (Chuba 2020). Vice President of Content Bela Bajaria backed up his statement to say,

in our YA [young adult] shows we don’t talk down or soften, we tackle edgy and

interesting topics and the writers really want to explore that in an authentic way.

We don’t need to try to make it into a general or family audience (Chuba 2020).

Like so, their statements pivot to constantly differentiate the service from legacy brands and content. However, throughout the late 2010s Netflix has pursued different

83 approaches to content featuring teens, including both family friendly and some more edgy media.

Unlike The CW of the early 2010s, which might have doubled down on how salacious, addicting, and taboo these shows might be, Netflix presented them as

“authentic.” This section examines how Netflix used a rhetoric of inspiring teen girls and inclusivity to introduce teen-oriented shows to adults in press releases from 2016–2019.

Like The WB and Freeform, Netflix focused on how its depictions of difficult and taboo issues and situations in teen-oriented fare might serve an important social purpose. For instance, in discussing its eight upcoming “clean teen” films, Mattocks told the New York

Times that Netflix wanted “to tell stories that actually feel meaningful and relevant to today’s kids and teens and that don’t talk down to them” (Barnes 2019). More specifically, a press release announcing a casting call for Tall Girl included the following statement from the Vice President of Kids and Family, Cobb:

At Netflix we are committed to being a platform where tweens can find movies

that inspire and empower them. One of the many reasons we’re excited to make

Tall Girl is the refreshing way it speaks to this audience with humor and heart

about embracing what makes them different and special using height as a framing

device. We look forward to canvassing the world for our very own Tall Female

Lead who can draw on her unique experience to authentically depict the

challenges and the lessons wrapped up in this tricky stage of life. (Olivas 2018a)

This statement introduces several consistent themes that appear across Netflix’s press releases about its teen- and tween-related content. 84 In these releases, Netflix presented adolescent experiences as awkward, difficult, and formative, fueled by a desperate fear of not fitting in, and a feeling that things matter an enormous amount (see for example Deza 2017; Netflix PR 2019). Netflix often used teen experiences to claim these productions have “universally relatable” appeal for broad audiences and presented them as offering adults a chance to relive adolescent experiences

(Netflix PR 2017a; Minezaki and Coble 2019). Further, with Tall Girl, Netflix claimed to

“inspire and empower” young women and to have them embrace what “makes them different and special.” In highlighting how these projects might give teens a way to navigate their current lives, Netflix might be assuring parents that Netflix provides great material for their children to watch.

On the series side, Netflix also has occasionally discussed empowering young, female viewers in press releases. For example, in Netflix’s announcement for their plans to adapt the Baby-Sitters Club book series, Cobb stated that “there has never been a more opportune time to tell an aspirational story about empowering young female entrepreneurs” and that Netflix’s “ambition is to contemporize the storylines and adventures of this iconic group of girlfriends to reflect modern-day issues” (Olivas

2019c). Cobb thus foregrounds the themes of female empowerment, entrepreneurialism, and friendship in the company’s statements to press. Again, I find this statement to be for the benefit of parents, positioning Netflix’s original as an excellent media option for young girls to watch. It is worth considering that this messaging concerns a slightly

85 younger audience than teens. Cobb specifically refers to Tall Girl viewers as “tweens” and the Baby-Sitters Club books are for elementary school readers.7

Press releases sometimes link Netflix programming featuring older teen characters to the company’s messaging about empowering women creators and viewers.

In 2016, Netflix debuted a She Rules marketing campaign with a 60-second spot Netflix aired during the Emmys, highlighting performances from actresses in Netflix original series (Berlinger 2016). Since then, primarily by using video on social media, the campaign has undergone several iterations, one of which, called We Rule, celebrated female directors, International Women’s Day, female-led shows, and Netflix employees.

As an example, She Rules Ramadan in 2017, portrayed Middle Eastern creatives drawing inspiration from watching shows featuring older women such as Girlboss (2017), Orange

Is The New Black (2013–2019), The Crown (2016–) as well as 13 Reasons. Middle

Eastern women were, as a Netflix press release put it, “breaking historical Hollywood stereotypes and challenging perceptions that women all over the world today face both in the workplace and at home” (Guilany-Lyard 2017). Some young adult shows, including

13 Reasons, link up to this messaging about women’s general empowerment.

7 Notably, though I have not encountered this level of empowering language in relation to 13 Reasons or Kissing Booth, as I identified above, Netflix PR and industrial discourses tend to group teen content with all kids content. On My Block and Stranger Things are Netflix series that feature very young teens played by actors their age, indicating a more tween-oriented sensibility, but now several seasons in, both series are becoming a bigger part of social media promotion to teens. The boundaries between tween and teen are permeable as defined by the platform. Thus, discourses surround tween properties bleed into those surrounding teen properties. 86 Another discourse in press releases related to young adult material is diversity and intersectionality. Elaborating on their renewal of (very explicitly sexual) Sex Education in a press release, Netflix wrote,

The series has been lauded for delivering a coming-of-age story with a fresh,

feminist heart, and for presenting intersectional and multidimensional characters

that audiences have fallen in love with. (Minezaki and Coble 2019)

In a way, the intersectionality of the characters serves as an implied justification by

Netflix for the series’ renewals.

News media and trade journals especially have made a connection between

Netflix’s young adult programming and diversity and/or intersectionality in terms of representations. When Variety argued that diversity is a mandate and key selling point in order for filmed entertainment to “draw young eyeballs and develop YA brand loyalty,”

Brian Wright agreed, indicating that diversity’s importance is unquantifiable to his work

(Dawn 2018). Other articles, meanwhile, highlight Netflix’s color-blind casting process, whereby the company produces casts “filled with young actors of all colours playing characters of different socioeconomic backgrounds, heritages that are actually spoken about, and sexual identities” (Romero 2019).

Whether narrowing to female young adult audiences or broadening to include women more generally, Netflix’s messaging to press links shows featuring teens with the through-lines of empowerment, entrepreneurialism, female friendship, and diversity. The following two chapters will further detail, via specific case studies of the marketing of programs, how Netflix develops these discourses on social media in order to more 87 actively engage young adult audiences, as well as the limitations of such discourses in terms of actually empowering young women and delivering inclusivity. The social media platforms are more precisely tailored and demographically attuned, allowing for Netflix to make less general claims about its programming. However, in terms of messaging within the industry or in engagements to the press/public in a broad sense, Netflix depicted the more sensational aspects of its teen-oriented programming as something that might appeal to a broad audience made up of adults nostalgic for their teenage years and parents searching for media with important lessons for their children.

Piercing the Cultural Zeitgeist

Though Netflix does not want teen audiences to become identified as part of Netflix’s brand, the presumption that teens watch Netflix in large numbers has garnered the company cultural clout in larger social discourses propagated by media critics (e.g.

Wagmeister 2017a). And, Netflix has appeared to embrace such presumptions, demonstrating through selective information collated from social media, the supposed enormous viewership of teen titles—without mentioning the teen-specific appeal these titles might have. This section first establishes why Netflix might need evidence of its popularity and success; then, I examine how social media and its metrics is increasingly the space where the company has convinced industry insiders and press that having a

Netflix subscription means being part of something special.

88 In the late 2010s, Netflix struggled with perceptions that its brand was weak. The strategy by which Netflix identifies as a service with something for everyone has led critics and creatives to disparage Netflix for not having a brand at all (Cobb 2019) or to protest that content will get lost on the platform because audiences will not know what to look for and where (Adalian 2018b). Initially, Netflix vehemently opposed such narratives through defending the efficiency of its personalized service. The Vice

President of Product, Yellin, argued that through recommending the “right” program to the “right” user on the platform, Netflix is “able to unlock more viewers than anyone”

(Adalian 2018b).

However, this argument has not been able to quell industry critique. A veteran talent agent quoted in a 2018 Vulture article complained that Netflix “content feels disposable,” but “creators and stars want to feel special, and they want to know the audience is responding to their work” (Adalian 2018b). Netflix intra-industry conversations and interviews with press from 2018 indicate the company sought out ways to accumulate and make visible audience response. Sarandos told investors the following in 2018:

there was a time when we didn’t market any of our content. We spent all of our

marketing effort just talking about Netflix and how to use it. And today we find…

it’s all mostly centered around getting people excited about watching a show

that’s only on Netflix…being able to aggregate people to talk about the same

things and watch the same things at roughly the same time has got a lot of value

(Thomson Reuters Street Events 2018c). 89 Since 2017, Netflix increasingly used data about internet traffic and measurements of social media activity to show how, in Sarandos’s words, “Netflix is breaking through the cultural zeitgeist” (Netflix 2016b). Young adult programming has been a key source of such data. A January 2017 shareholder letter states,

It’s amazing to think that we launched original programming on Netflix in 2013

and in just four years, our original series accounted for five of the top 10 most

searched TV shows of 2016 globally, including Stranger Things at #1, according

to Google trends. (Netflix 2017a)

Netflix made further use of Google metrics in subsequent shareholder letters. Following

13 Reasons’ release, Netflix shared a graph of the Google search data for their original series released during the past year. Their report portrayed what appears to be an immense spike in interest in 13 Reasons. In comparison, Luke Cage and Iron Fist,

Disney/Marvel productions that presumably should hold a lot of heft due to brand awareness, appear puny. Meanwhile, when comparing average viewer interest over the whole time period (in the small bar graph to the left), Stranger Things clearly dominated

(Netflix 2017b).

90

Figure 2.1: Graphic of Google trends from Netflix shareholder letter, “evidence” of 13 Reasons and Stranger Things’ popular appeal. (Netflix 2017b)

The following shareholder letter in January 2018 then made a statement based on the Google trends published for 2017: “It’s amazing to think that in only 5 years since launching our first original series, Netflix had three of the Top 5 most searched TV shows globally for the second year in a row.” Stranger Things and 13 Reasons were number one and two respectively, though Netflix did not name them in the report (Netflix 2018a).

Much like with their public communications about VidCon participation, Netflix might have been reticent to admit teen-oriented shows were their most popular because teens are not considered the highest quality demographic. At the same time, the shows regularly identified as part of Netflix’s young adult roster provide evidence for Netflix’s phenomenal success in attracting internet attention. 91 Other internet data published in 2017 further supported Netflix’s claims that teen- oriented shows drive a lot of attention. In April, following 13 Reasons’ release, Variety obtained exclusive third-party Twitter data showing that 13 Reasons was the “most tweeted about show of 2017,” amassing 11 million tweets in three weeks (Wagmeister

2017a). In October, Variety obtained similar data indicating that the second season of

Stranger Things broke Twitter records to become “the most tweeted-about streaming show” during an opening weekend with 3.7 million tweets in three days (Wagmeister

2017b). These numbers are hard to verify, contextualize, or compare because they represent different periods of data collection (three weeks versus three days) and because the number of tweets other shows have garnered over time is not disclosed in these articles. Even without substantiation, though, these numbers reinforce a sense of Netflix’s cultural dominance alongside teen media.

Interestingly, in addition to providing information about number of tweets produced in the 13 Reasons article, Variety reported that cast members also saw “drastic growth” in their Twitter followings, growing from a rough average of 1,000 to 75,000 followers (Wagmeister 2017a). Furthermore, Variety noted that star Katherine Langford had 2.9 million Instagram followers at the time of the article’s writing, and though the trade publication could not ascertain how many followers the actress had before the show’s premiere, “sources close to Netflix say the growth is drastic” (Wagmeister

2017a). With backing from Netflix-related sources, Variety set a formula for

92 conceptualizing Netflix’s cultural impact using the growth in casts’ social media followings before and after a show’s premiere.8

In subsequent shareholder letters, Netflix embraced the formula of comparing star social media followings before and after a premiere. Moving into the summer of 2018,

Netflix released teen film The Kissing Booth and romantic comedy Set It Up and proclaimed that the two “have been watched and loved by tens of millions of Netflix members and the young stars of these films have seen their social media followings grow from a few thousand into the millions in the weeks following release” (Netflix 2018b).9

By October 2018, Netflix had released all of its romantic comedies in its “Summer of

Love” slate and reported to investors that “more than 80 million accounts have watched one or more of the Summer of Love films globally” (Netflix 2018e). Netflix also included a new graph showing the increase to multiple millions of followers on Instagram for stars in Stranger Things, 13 Reasons, Money Heist, Kissing Booth, and To All the

Boys. Except for Money Heist, these shows and films are all set at high schools. Netflix wrote that this graph demonstrates how “Netflix has been a launching pad for a new generation of global stars” and that the actors’ “explosive growth in popularity is a good indicator that our shows and stars are breaking out around the planet” (Netflix 2018e).

8 The Variety article is outside of Netflix’s official communication efforts, but the fact that Netflix spokespeople were prepared to say Langford’s social media account saw “drastic” growth indicate to me that Variety was potentially responding to narratives Netflix itself promulgated. 9 Netflix also noted Kissing Booth “peaked at #4 on IMDb’s chart of most popular movies, behind only Deadpool 2, The Avengers: Infinity War and Solo: A Star Wars Story” (Netflix 2018a). This statistic strategically suggested that Netflix can compete with big box office movies. 93 After Netflix launched Élite in late 2018, the January 2019 shareholder letter shared yet another graph showing the growth in Instagram followers for the show’s actors. Netflix stated that Élite’s “social engagement has been phenomenal” (Netflix

2019a), demonstrating yet again how much attention Netflix can attract without even the need for established stars.

Figure 2.2: Graphic from Netflix shareholder letter showing “explosive growth” in Instagram followings of Netflix stars. (Netflix 2018e)

94

Figure 2.3: Graphic from Netflix shareholder letter claiming actors in teen-targeted series Élite have all become stars. (Netflix 2019a)

In an early 2019 earnings call, an interviewer stated that he was “legitimately stunned” at the amount of viewership data Netflix had shared in the latest shareholder letter (Thomson Reuters 2019a). In addition to sharing internet traffic and social media data, Netflix has begun using more quantitative figures about how many accounts watched certain programming, and this interviewer asked why. Sarandos replied that these numbers “are less financial metrics as they are cultural metric,” and that they indicate,

people are talking about it, Tweeting about it, posting about it…what’s important

is that for part of your Netflix subscription, you're in the zeitgeist. You get—

you’re watching the programming that the rest of the world is loving at the same

time. (Netflix 2019a)

95 If Netflix wishes to create the experience of participating in the cultural zeitgeist, engineering individual silos within the service is not enough. Jason Mittell (2016) argues that for Netflix “it’s far more important to dominate the conversation than have millions of people actually watch its programs,” meaning that if Netflix succeeds in generating buzz and awareness for its content, it creates demand for the service. In other words, cultural currency, generated from many people talking about the same content, regardless of whether they are watching it, is valuable to retain and attract subscribers. Like The

CW and The WB, Netflix found value in releasing data about teen-oriented programming for maintaining cultural currency.

But while Netflix appears to be more transparent about data, the selective nature of this transparency is evident in how it presents its teen content and the appeal of such content. Even though teen-oriented shows are prominently featured by Netflix as among its most impactful, the company goes to great lengths in both its intra-industry and public communications to obscure the extent to which teens represent the viewership for such shows. In doing so, Netflix can imply that all audiences are engaged with and excited by the Netflix brand. In other words, Netflix can sustain their rhetoric that their service provides all things for all people, without substantive evidence that this is the case. The fewer viewership numbers Netflix provides, the easier it is to control the perception of

Netflix’s popularity.

96 Conclusion

As explored in this chapter, Netflix stresses the personalization of its service to press and industry insiders, strictly avoiding strong associations between its content and any specific target audience(s). Demographics appear unimportant to how the Netflix platform works and of arguable importance to Netflix’s programming decisions.

Likewise, teen viewers seem to receive no special distinction or attention from Netflix’s product and content executives. This chapter has read against the grain of Netflix discourses, pointing out contradictions that indicate Netflix nonetheless has found value in creating programming for key demographic-related groups, including international audiences, kids and families, and teens. Overall, Netflix combines the “mass” audience strategy of traditional broadcast television (programming with broad appeal for mass audiences) with “niche” cable strategies (customizing programming based on niche audience traits and interests). Thus, following Amanda Lotz (2017), Netflix’s audience strategy can be understood as a conglomeration of niches.

Having complicated Netflix’s relationship to demographics, I can now turn to a closer examination of how Netflix does engage in targeting on more than just an individual level. When Netflix increased its marketing budget by 60% in 2018, Netflix executive Eric Pallotta, who was working on branding and social media argued, “right now, there are things that the algorithms just aren’t capable of doing.” For greater audience engagement—to connect with subscribers who might be discovering a Netflix show or film at any point—Pallotta recommended social media marketing (Adalian

97 2018b). As shown in the next two chapters, Netflix’s marketing and social media efforts work toward creating a feeling of shared experience among audience segments, though this effort always is in tension with the service’s personalization.

98 Chapter 3 Helping Parents and Befriending Teens: Marketing 13 Reasons Why

Netflix’s release of Stranger Things in July 2016 was widely understood by the popular press as marking an expansion in Netflix’s audience from adults to teens (Davis

2016; Lancaster 2017; Miller 2018; Thomas 2018). Though Stranger Things focuses on the adventures of a group of preteens of a similar age to an ideal young adult audience,

Netflix executives did not discuss the show as addressed to teens. Instead, it was pitched as appealing to multiple generations, including “adults nostalgic for ‘80s-era Stephen

King” (Miller 2018). The following year, 13 Reasons—with its connection to young adult source material (namely Jay Asher’s eponymous book)—could have been used as a fresh opportunity for Netflix to launch a show more explicitly targeted to a teen audiences.

Promotion for 13 Reasons, however, suggests the streaming service once again aimed for multigenerational appeal, targeting a crossover audience of both teens and adults.

However, different generations of viewers were targeted within and across Netflix’s social media accounts. Digging into how Netflix produced both generalized and more specific, demographic-based appeals to audiences, this chapter address how two different

Netflix Twitter accounts marketed 13 Reasons distinctly for teens and adults. If demographics do not matter to the Netflix product and content teams, differences between Netflix social media accounts speak to how demographics do matter to Netflix’s marketing efforts.

99 In this chapter, I analyze posts on several Netflix accounts starting with the release of 13 Reasons’s first promo in January 2017 through its renewal announcement in

May 2017. On @netflix, where the streaming platform could reach a more general (i.e., adult) audience, Netflix initially did not devote much space to 13 Reasons, except to occasionally suggest it was suspenseful viewing material for adults. However, as criticism of the series’ depiction of suicide escalated throughout April 2017, @netflix produced videos posted to that account, which reframe 13 Reasons as a show that opens up conversations between adults and their teen children. Thus the @netflix account ultimately constructed itself and the show as an ally to parents.

Concurrently, Netflix’s @13ReasonsWhy account favored a more youthful point of view. This account, unlike @netflix, extensively engaged with viewers via replies to tweets, thereby establishing personal communication between the property and viewers.

Focusing on the challenges of teen life, the account purported to relate to young audiences. Furthermore, @13ReasonsWhy constructed being a teenage fan of the show as being friends with the show and its stars. By bifurcating promotional content between the two accounts, Netflix could specifically target the people it imagines it reaches with each.

Preliminary Promotion of 13 Reasons Why via Social Media

Executive producer Selena Gomez released the first teaser-trailer for 13 Reasons on

January 25, 2017 on her Instagram page, about two months before 13 Reasons’s release on Netflix (Thorne 2017). Netflix’s Twitter post followed about an hour and a half later 100 (Netflix US 2017a). Both posts featured the same video clip, but the two social media accounts inflected different elements of the video. These posts demonstrate how, from the outset, Netflix sold 13 Reasons as appealing to both younger and older audiences.

Furthermore, the posts show how Netflix varied content on its different channels of communication to tailor its message for the audience it expected to reach there.

Figure 3.1: Selena Gomez Instagram post on left and @netflix Twitter post on right of first teaser trailer for 13 Reasons Why. (Gomez 2017; Netflix US 2017a)

Gomez might have been a natural choice to introduce the show because of the number of people she could immediately reach: her 108 million followers were the biggest following of any person on Instagram at the time (Thorne 2017). However, this marketing choice rewarded the specific subset of people who had interest in Gomez.

Gomez’s prior background appearing on shows on The Disney Channel in the late 2000s and early 2010s, as well as her subsequent success as a pop singer-songwriter, clearly tied 101 her and 13 Reasons to a young, female audience. Thus, Netflix’s choice to inform

Gomez’s following first can be understood as privileging a young female audience active on social media.

Furthermore, the teaser trailer Gomez posted itself referenced teen-specific media.

The teaser sequence is set to music from electronic pop singer Ruelle, whose work had been featured before on numerous teen dramas, including The Originals (CW, 2013–

2018) and Teen Wolf (MTV, 2011–2017), and had become popular on Freeform’s

Shadowhunters (2016–2019) soundtrack the previous year (Zoelling 2016).

Shadowhunter viewers who felt Ruelle had taken them on an “emotional rollercoaster”

(Zoelling 2016) had reason to make an instant connection with 13 Reasons. Thus, leaning on prominent stars and popular music, Netflix appealed to teen television viewers through Gomez’s Instagram post.

However, Netflix also invited alternate interpretations of 13 Reasons as an adult show, as highlighted especially through the Twitter post. The tweet sharing the video read, “She has nothing left to lose…but they do.” In contrast to Gomez’s post, which described 13 Reasons simply as “passion project,” this Twitter post framed the show as suspenseful. The teaser trailer itself, rather than identifying 13 Reasons as a “best-selling young adult novel,” described the source material as a “best-selling mystery.” During the teaser sequence, the main characters are lined up against lockers. As the camera pans slowly from one character to the next, they glance shiftily to the side and make vaguely self-incriminating statements such as “people were starting to talk…I had to do something.” Superimposed text flashes word by word: “They all killed her.” The Twitter 102 post underscored the mystery and thriller aspects of the teaser, which tend to be interpreted as more serious and adult.

Indeed, in the following months, initial reviews from trade papers and the popular press often cited 13 Reasons as worthwhile television for older audiences in part by framing the show more as a mystery and less as a teen drama. Newman and Levine

(2012) have noted that the emotionally based plotlines of soap operas and teen dramas have been considered less complex and less serious than other genres. Accordingly,

IndieWire, which praised the “adult edges” of 13 Reasons wrote that the series directors

“create almost a noir-ish feel amidst the streetlight soaked streets of this small town”

(Miller 2017). Entertainment Weekly argued that though there were “more than a few moments that tilt too far into the I Know What Your Pretty Little Vampire Diaries Did

Last Summer trope of teen shows,” the show is nevertheless “a crackling whodunnit”

(Greenblatt 2017). Likewise, The Hollywood Reporter praised “a threatening thriller aspect that absolutely propels the narrative” though “teens are the intended core of the 13

Reasons Why audience” (Fienberg 2017). Reviews such as these use the mystery genre to mark 13 Reasons as mature and worthy of viewing by older audiences.10

The remainder of this chapter elaborates on the ways Netflix marketed 13

Reasons differently to teens and adults through its social media accounts. I show how the initial methods of emphasizing stars to reach younger viewers and emphasizing genre to reach older ones carried through as Netflix continued the promote the show in the months

10 It is worth noting that the mystery, thriller, and noir genres have more masculine connotations, as opposed to the more feminine connotations held by teen dramatic fare. As a result, the discursive ageing up of 13 Reasons is also a masculinization. 103 following its release, and I identify other key methods the streamer appeared to rely on.

Though the general @netflix Twitter account maintained appeals to multiple audiences, older and younger alike, it skewed toward an adult point of view and most resoundingly framed 13 Reasons as a coviewing experience that would help parents strengthen their bonds with their children. Meanwhile, the @13ReasonsWhy Twitter, Instagram, and

Tumblr accounts referenced multiple facets of a teen lifestyle to suggest its proximity with and understanding of teens. Moreover, @13ReasonsWhy on Twitter posted multiple promotional videos featuring the show’s stars that directly addressed teen viewers of 13

Reasons as friends. In these ways, more than simply convincing disparate users to watch

13 Reasons, Netflix worked to construct an intimacy with the two age groups. As I explore in depth in the following sections, Netflix’s social media activity managed the service’s relationship with audiences, containing criticism and encouraging audiences to feel a friendship or partnership with the Netflix brand.

A Netflix Guide to Connecting with your Children: Targeting Parents

Promotion of 13 Reasons on Twitter’s @netflix suggested three main audiences. A handful of posts related to 13 Reasons focus on the mystery genre and distance the series teen dramas, indicating an anticipated adult audience. Meanwhile, a few posts appear to hail teen viewers when they highlight the travails of high school life, reference teen dramas, or emphasize social media communication. Like the teen-oriented networks discussed in chapter 1, @netflix on Twitter seemed to be broadening the appeal of teen 104 television to simultaneously reach a conglomeration of niches. I argue, though, that ultimately a privileging of an adult point of view is evident on the account. First, not many posts reference 13 Reasons in the months before and after its release, indicating that the teen drama was a low priority for the account. Second, especially as criticism of the series’ treatment of suicide peaked in April 2017, @netflix began to address parents more concretely. Most prominently, the @netflix account on Twitter framed the show as a beneficial coviewing tool for parents to discuss important issues with teens.

In total, there were 11 tweets devoted to 13 Reasons on @netflix from January 25,

2017 to May 17, 2017, spanning the release of the series’ first promo to one week after the announcement of renewal for a second season. 13 Reasons had a very minor Twitter presence on @netflix compared to other series like Santa Clarita Diet (2017–2019).

Strikingly, @netflix did not post about 13 Reasons’s trailer release at all, because it was busy promoting teasers and trailers for War Machine (2017) and Mindhunter (2017–)

(Netflix US 2017b, 2017c). Instead, the trailer was posted to 13 Reasons’s dedicated

Twitter account, in total separation from the general Netflix account.11 The deprioritization of the teen drama in favor of more adult-leaning genres, a war satire and psychological thriller series respectively, suggest adults were the primary targets of

@netflix.

11 Mindhunter also had a separate Twitter, whereas War Machine did not. Further research is necessary to address which Netflix originals have dedicated accounts and why, but my findings are that most Netflix series and a few movies have their own Twitter and/or Instagram account. Netflix appears to privilege series that it anticipates needing sustained promotion over multiple seasons as well as movies that might win awards like 2017’s Mudbound. 105 Furthermore, in keeping with the teaser-trailer tweet discussed at the beginning of this chapter, the few promotional posts devoted to 13 Reasons work mainly to highlight the mysterious and thrilling elements of the show. For example, a post from April 3,

2017—just a few days after the show’s release—used the catchphrase “She’s got nothing left to lose...but they do,” paired with a video of a phone screen inside a group chat. In the sequence, various messages from the characters appear in the chat as they fight over how to cover something up that would get them in trouble with the police (Netflix US

2017f). Thus, Netflix focuses on the suspenseful elements of the story, marking it for adults.

However, some posts do appear to directly address young, female audiences.

Outside of 13 Reasons promotion, @netflix invoked teen viewers through a handful of other tweets. For example, in May, a few tweets address high school and college students’ temptation to watch Netflix during finals (Netflix US 2017k, 2017l). Still, demonstrating Netflix’s tendency to balance the interests of multiple audiences simultaneously, these tweets also hailed adults because they featured older actors joking about their poor success in school in the past and thereby invited older viewers to reminisce about their own memories. In a more targeted effort to appeal to teens,

@netflix shared a graphic of Netflix’s “Who’s Watching” launch screen with four user profiles labeled as different doppelgangers of Vampire Diaries heroine Elena (Netflix US

106 2017d).12 This tweet rewarded the fans of Vampire Diaries, commonly presumed to be young and female, who would recognize the four distinct personas.

A few tweets in promotion of 13 Reasons also seem to target teens. On the show’s premiere date (March 31) and two weeks later (April 13), the @netflix account shared two videos (seemingly shot on the same day) featuring the show’s two main stars,

Katherine Langford (Hannah) and Dylan Minnette (Clay). The March 31st video has the two actors speak directly to the camera to introduce the show, describing it as “a show that you relate to, makes you laugh, cry, and leaves you emotionally moved,” “a show that makes you reach out to your friends and family,” and a show that is “as real as it gets” (Netflix US 2017e). The two actors’ direct address, a format seemingly only used with young adult content, implied an audience of a similar age as them. The video also seemed to address young viewers because it recommended sharing with friends first and then with family (as opposed to watching with your children). Further, the video employed the youthful phrase, “real as it gets.” The April 13th video used the same format to share tips for high school or “getting through your teenage years,” such as being “comfortable in your own skin” or singing, writing, or talking so you “don’t let your feelings eat at you.” The video concluded that “we’re all figuring it out together”

(Netflix US 2017h). Thus, even more explicitly, this second video spoke to a teen audience currently in high school. Notably, neither of these posts were on the

@13ReasonsWhy account. Due to this absence on the more teen-focused

12 In spring of 2017 Vampire Diaries was estimated to be one of the most streamed shows on Netflix once its final season wrapped up on The CW and landed on Netflix in mid-March (Parrot Analytics 2017). An April 2017 article declared Vampire Diaries the second most-tweeted about show of the year, after 13 Reasons (Wagmeister 2017a). 107 @13ReasonsWhy, I propose that the presentation of these cheerful, friendly appeals to teenagers might actually be intended for parents, in order to convince them that 13

Reasons is a suitable show to watch with their children.

Indeed, several 13 Reasons-related posts on Twitter’s @netflix directly center the point of view of parents. This set of parent-centric Twitter posts seem to respond to the criticism 13 Reasons received from parents, youth mental health specialists, and suicide prevention groups. As soon as the show premiered, a swift and damning outpouring of news reports criticized the ways in which 13 Reasons might normalize, sensationalize, outline steps toward, or otherwise encourage suicidal ideation among teens (Dry 2017;

Howard 2017; Gilbert 2017; Henick 2017). With its March 31 release, Netflix had included content warnings before two episodes and a 30 minute episode called “Beyond the Reasons” which featured cast and crew discussing slut shaming, cyberbullying, sexual assault, and suicide signs and prevention—but critics did not consider the warnings and informational episode sufficient measures. In May, Netflix worked with public relations and marketing firm Zeno Group to conduct a study, which found that watching TV shows like 13 Reasons helped kids and their parents talk about difficult issues and bond (Rosman 2018). Further, in fall 2017 Netflix commissioned an academic study with Northwestern University, which arrived at the same conclusion—namely, that

13 Reasons was a catalyst for conversation between children and parents. (Rosman

2018).

Accordingly, two Twitter posts promoted the idea that 13 Reasons was an ally for parents, helping teens confront big issues in their lives. On April 7, @netflix shared a 5- 108 minute video of four pairs of youth, ages 14 to 20, who talk to each other about

#ReasonsWhyYouMatter. Dealing with a smorgasbord of issues, such as growing up in abusive homes with drug users, distant relationships with parents, or living with diabetes, the teens conclude that they “mean something to the people around” them and though they “may not always realize it” they “are amazing” (Netflix US 2017g). This video focuses exclusively on teens and reuses the “getting real” language from the

Langford/Minnette promo to introduce it, suggesting an intended teen audience.

However, both the message that 13 Reasons empowers teenagers, and the post’s placement on the general @netflix account rather than the @13ReasonsWhy account, suggest that it is meant to appeal primarily to parents. Further, this video is similar in terms of theme and format to a later video post about parents, indicating a connection between the two.

An April 25 video post again featured multiple pairs of people talking to each other, however, this time, the pairs were made up of a parent and child (Netflix US

2017i). The post is not explicitly about 13 Reasons, but the conceit is that each of the 10 featured families watch 13 Reasons and grow closer together as result. At the beginning of the clip, families express that they are “close at times, but not as close as I would wish,” that they want to confide in each other and talk about feelings—but there is distance between them whereby a parent “couldn’t put herself in my shoes.” After the families watch 13 Reasons, however, the parent-child pairs discuss the parts of the show that were funny, interesting, or annoying. Eventually they start to get emotional, saying things like, “I feel like that is what you experienced in middle school.” Then, an intertitle 109 says families were asked if they had ever had conversations like this before and the families say no. The segment concludes with remarks such as “if we have common ground we can resolve any problem that arises” and “having something in common, being able to share opinions…that’s where we can start.” The message of this video perfectly matches the infographics Netflix published based on the Zeno Group study: these infographics indicated that parents needed television programs like 13 Reasons as a means of establishing bonds with their children and talking about tough issues.

110 Figure 3.2: On the left: Netflix infographic recommending shows for parents to watch to connect with teens. On the right: Netflix infographic based on Zeno Group survey, finding that watching the same shows gives parents a way to bond with children. Notably, 13 Reasons is visually highlighted in both graphics. (Dave, I Love My Kids Blog 2017)

Without engaging directly with criticism of 13 Reasons, the two video features posted to @netflix on Twitter reframe rhetoric that 13 Reasons is potentially harmful to young viewers, claiming instead that it can be a boon. Thus, @netflix indirectly manages audience reaction: negative reactions are imperceptible and positive associations are encouraged. Though the @netflix Twitter account targets different audiences in different ways, it put most resources into videos of high production value to draw in parents. As explored in chapter 2, Netflix executives have stated they value family coviewing. The

111 April 25 video, like the study Netflix commissioned, promote the benefits of families watching shows together on Netflix. Thus, while counteracting denunciation of 13 Reasons, Netflix also sold itself as the ideal streaming service for families.

Instagram Stalking and Tumblr Style: Emulating Teen Lifestyles and Practices

Before delving into @13ReasonsWhy Twitter activity, I want to first provide a brief overview of Netflix’s use of Instagram and Tumblr to promote 13 Reasons. The dedicated 13 Reasons accounts on both platforms contain a limited amount of posts in comparison to the @netflix and @13ReasonsWhy Twitter accounts. However, the

Instagram and Tumblr presences emulated teen lifestyles and practices and served to promote the show to teen viewers. @13ReasonsWhy on Instagram created realistic social media accounts for characters in order to immerse visitors into the high school world of

13 Reasons, whereas 13reasonswhy.tumblr.com borrowed the aesthetics of Tumblr to post as a teen fan of the show.

Netflix’s promotion for 13 Reasons season one on Instagram account

@13reasonswhy remained set in the 13 Reasons story world, only referencing the characters, settings, and objects found in the series. In other words, the account does not include the cast and crew nor does it (directly) hail potential viewers. Unlike the Netflix

Twitter accounts, it does not post teasers, trailers, or promotional images. Instead, notable props and settings feature prominently. They are displayed as if they were shot by a

112 fellow student attending the series’ high school. Some quite literally seem posted by a character: Netflix created individual Instagram accounts for the main characters and reposted pictures the characters had taken of each other through these accounts.13 These fake social media posts were further compiled into multiple video posts on the

@13ReasonsWhy Instagram account. The videos play as if one of the characters was scrolling through their personal Instagram feed, encountering a sequence of posts that, assembled together, set up background for key plot points and relationships. Other posts capture text conversations between key characters in screenshots or videos of a phone messenger application.

The phrase Instagram stalking, though problematic to use because of the way it might minimize serious instances of online harassment, has commonly described how social media users go through the social media profiles of a person they are interested in, perhaps somewhat compulsively, in order to learn more about them. Netflix created an online environment ideal for prompting Instagram stalking of the 13 Reasons world. In a fashion similar to Freeform’s online promotion for Pretty Little Liars, the 13 Reasons

Instagram account creates a transmedia story for interested audiences to immerse themselves in and piece together. The account heightened a sense of hidden information

13 These accounts were likely created between January and March 2017, at around the same time as the @13ReasonsWhy Instagram account because the Instagram handles cited on the @13ReasonsWhy Instagram account in 2017 are consistent with the existing fake accounts as of March 2020. However, the earliest posts on the fake accounts are from April and May 2018 (when Netflix was promoting the second season). It is possible Netflix did not actually post to the fake Instagram accounts until 2018, or that the 2017 posts were deleted for some reason. Though I could not confirm the exact function of these accounts in 2017, at least within the @13ReasonsWhy account, “reposts” and video compilations create the sense that these accounts had posted and interacted with each other as if the characters were real high schoolers communicating in real time. The posts from 2018 currently existing on the fake accounts create the same illusion of reality. 113 through adding a glitch or scrambled footage effect to many of the gif and video posts.

Text and faces change during the scramble/glitch to become incriminating.

Because this account stays firmly within the 13 Reasons world, its intended audience is less obvious.14 However, recalling some of the transmedia marketing tactics of The CW and Freeform, @13ReasonsWhy’s presentation of teen characters documenting their days as well as tracking and reporting on each other in real time invites viewers to partake in following the 13 Reasons social media accounts alongside the characters as if they were another teenager at Liberty High School. Already imagined as absorbed in socializing through social media and cell phones, teen viewers are the ideal audience of such promotion.

In contrast to the Instagram site, which immersed teen viewers in the story world, the Tumblr site that Netflix created for 13 Reasons seems like a fan account of the show.

13ReasonsWhy.tumblr.com features a collection of about 50 images published between

March and August 2017.15 The images draw from and alter publicity stills and photos from the @13ReasonsWhy Instagram page. The alterations made as the images shift from

Instagram to Tumblr employ an aesthetic referencing both scrapbooks (e.g., cut out and taped, glued, or post-it text), and digital manipulation (e.g., saturated or otherwise altered colors, layered textures, and animated text). These modifications mimic “Tumblr style” editing, a practice linked to young females on Tumblr. As discussed by Stein (2017), girls

14 The account’s mode of address would change with later seasons of 13 Reasons however. Posts in 2019 made an effort to mimic teen speak and there are multiple reposts of the show’s stars’ behind-the-scenes and general photos. 15 Netflix did not update this Tumblr for the other three seasons of 13 Reasons, although the general Netflix.tumblr.com does include a smattering of 13 Reasons posts around the release dates in 2018 and 2019. 114 and fans more generally, have created striking, “affective visual displays” (94) on the website, such as manipulating photos and attaching quotes to them, to create a space that expresses their thoughts and feelings.

Figure 3.3: Comparison of official Tumblr image on left and fan-created Tumblr edit on right. Both use a muted palate, a rip effect, and text to reflect on a character from the show. (13reasonswhy on Tumblr 2017; meljtr 2017)

Thus, Netflix positioned the show within a culture associated with digital practices and younger users. Moreover, Netflix created the superficial appearance of deep engagement with 13 Reasons by displaying a gallery of images seemingly lovingly altered. Netflix appealed to teen viewers by partaking in fan practices and performing emotional attachment to the characters. In sum, Netflix hailed teen audiences on

Instagram through inviting viewers into the digitally constructed social circles of the characters and on Tumblr through creating emotionally infused, fan-like images. Several 115 of the Instagram and Tumblr posts were also featured on the @13ReasonsWhy Twitter account and helped construct it as a teen-oriented space.

13 Reasons Why You Matter to Us: Targeting Teens

In contrast to the modest 11 tweets about 13 Reasons Why that appeared in the @netflix account, Netflix’s @13ReasonsWhy Twitter account posted 583 tweets between January

25 and May 17, 2017. These posts did not always address teens in obvious ways. In contrast to social media posts from The CW and Freeform, which used digital lingo including exclamation points, gifs, and excitement, the @13ReasonsWhy style remained more somber and understated. The account followed an austere style of succinct, stark sentences always ending in periods and sustained a grave tone with phrases like “the little things matter,” “Hannah’s story needed to be heard/told” and “the truth comes out in the end.” Also in contrast to The CW’s and Freeform’s accounts, @13ReasonsWhy did not dwell on the appearance of characters or on the clothes they wore. Excluding one sole post I logged, the account did not aim to uplift or to encourage the many popular forms of young folks’ fan engagement around the series, including 13 Reasons-themed promposals, “Welcome to your tape” memes, cassette-emblazoned T-shirts, slime, and painting nails blue (Sasso 2017; Rosman 2017). Only 7 posts promoted the music on the show and only 14 featured the show’s stars or other celebrities. Thus, @13ReasonsWhy did not appear interested in engaging teens to the extent that other teen-focused television

116 brands have, or at least the account did not do so in the same fashion as The CW and

Freeform.16

Nevertheless, I find @13ReasonsWhy targeted teens more than other audience constituencies in two main ways. First, the account reshared many of the posts found on the teen-oriented @13ReasonsWhy Instagram and Tumblr accounts, inviting viewers to immerse themselves as fellow teenagers in the digitally networked social world of

Liberty High School and to engage in the fan practices of young females. Second,

@13ReasonsWhy used direct address, especially via videos in which the show’s stars talk to fans, to establish itself as a confidant of teens. Rather than focusing as much on trends and appearance to establish a proximity to audiences like The CW and Freeform had,

@13ReasonsWhy indicated it cared deeply about teenagers’ difficult experiences and challenges and could relate to them on a personal level. Elaborating on such methods, this section shows how Netflix’s @13ReasonsWhy account on Twitter promoted 13 Reasons principally to teen viewers.

Of 583 @13ReasonsWhy tweets between January and May 2017, 78 shared promotional material, which I classify in four categories. 23 promotional posts were publicity images, stills, or videos. 16 were assorted featurettes, including behind the scenes videos of the cast members and links to articles or videos not produced by Netflix.

25 followed the style established on Instagram: videos and gifs that depict scrolling a social media feed, a texting conversation, and/or use the aforementioned glitch effect,

16 It is possible that Netflix, still only about a year into releasing teen-oriented programming, had not yet developed such strategies to address teen viewers. After all, @13ReasonsWhy posts from 2018 and 2019 compare more directly to CW and Freeform ones, with a greater reliance on the latest music and fashion and excited teen language, as well as an emphasis on how characters look. 117 which reveals a hidden dark side to high school daily life. Finally, 14 followed a Tumblr style: reposts of the edits from the Tumblr page or gifsets from key relationship moments from the series episodes. Altogether, these four categories of promotional tweets made up less than 15 percent of posts. However, the reuse of the Instagram and Tumblr style suggest teen viewers were targeted on the @13ReasonsWhy Instagram account.

Figure 3.4: Side-by-side of a Netflix-created gifset on Twitter and fan-created gifset on Tumblr of the same scene between main characters Hannah and Clay. (13 Reasons Why 2017d; ravenclairee 2017)

The overwhelming majority of Twitter posts on @13ReasonsWhy, representing

505 of the 583 tweets I logged, were direct replies to posts made by Twitter users. Thus,

118 the account prioritized making connections with users. Streamlining a system for replies,

@13ReasonsWhy developed a lexicon of 30 or so phrases based on quotes from the series and language from official promotional materials to respond to tweets that tagged the show or the account. Each phrase was flexible enough to work as a response for a variety of tweets. For instance, a March 31 response to a Twitter user planning to watch one more episode even though it was 4am read, “Just press play” (13 Reasons Why

2017c). Meanwhile, an April 3 response to a Twitter user praising the series’ soundtrack read, “The full soundtrack is now available. Just press play” (13 Reasons Why 2017h).

These direct responses to Twitter users favored the point of view of a younger viewer more than that of other audience constituencies. To a Twitter user bemoaning that

“these children” do not know what a boom box is, Netflix replied “Too old school.” On three occasions the account responded with a variation on “high school sucks/is hell/is bullshit” (13 Reasons Why 2017e, 2017f, 2017l). Thus, the @13ReasonsWhy lexicon had a youthful-leaning slant in several tweets. But despite these age-related replies that give preference to the experience of younger viewers, most responses were too general to imply any anticipated audience in particular (e.g. “Just press play”). By themselves, the

@13ReasonsWhy direct are not especially geared toward teen audiences. However, in combination with the grave tone of the account and several video featurettes from the show’s stars, the account’s reliance on direct address positioned Netflix as an intimate confidant of struggling teens. The following paragraphs explain further.

The thematic relevance of the phrases the account used and its timely response rate produced a sense that the Twitter account was reflecting on and reacting to the story 119 alongside you, the viewer. To viewers who were thinking about the key messages of the story, the Netflix account would reply with “Everything affects everything,” a central quote from main character Hannah Baker, which inspired her classmates to treat each other better (13 Reasons Why 2017k). To tweets quoting or referencing scenes from the show (“I want a hot chocolate friendship”), Netflix would respond with a related quote

(“Hot chocolate is the cure for all things shitty in life”) (13 Reasons Why 2017m). The

@13ReasonsWhy Twitter account seemed just as knowledgeable about and invested in the story as viewers—as well as eager to share in viewer response.

However, the account’s reliance on pre-written phrases sometimes alienated viewers. To anyone following @13ReasonsWhy moderately closely, the repetition would have been obvious, making the account’s interactions seem far from organic or personal.

Furthermore, awkward or stilted exchanges took place as a result of the limited set of phrases. For example, the account responded with “Your first crush is always the hardest” to tonally disparate tweets about the relationship between main characters

Hannah and Clay, including one that expressed distress that Clay never made a move on

Hannah before her death by suicide, and another that celebrated how cute the two are together (13 Reasons Why 2017b, 2017i). Though the account’s reply addressed a similar subject as the posters, in neither case are the posters reflecting on the conventional hardships of teenage romance centered in this prebaked response.

In other cases, the account received pushback from users. Beginning the day after premiere (April 1) and continuing through the last day I collected data (May 17),

@13ReasonsWhy responded to 194 tweets that reference depression or self-harm with 120 one of three pre-formed responses guiding audiences to 13ReasonsWhy.info, a resource center Netflix created with guidance from the American Foundation for Suicide

Prevention and the American School Counselor Association (Dry 2017; Petski 2017;

Rosman 2018). Twitter users objected to the pithy response from @13ReasonsWhy because they found it very inadequate—a “robo-response” that was “#nothelping” (13

Reasons Why 2017n). Appearing to sacrifice the quality of individual responses for facilitating a big quantity of responses, Netflix’s strategy had significant limitations.

However, the quantity of direct responses @13ReasonsWhy produced as well as their grave tone, appeal to teenagers in their personalized acknowledgment of tough experiences. From early featurettes—in which actors expressed pride that the show was tackling an “uncomfortable topic” unique to the current moment of digital bullying without “cutting corners or trying to sugarcoat it”—the account consistently shared messaging about what an important story it was sharing (13 Reasons Why 2017a).

@13ReasonsWhy told viewers that it was uniquely willing to truthfully, authentically address the tough issues teens face. These declarations suggested that Netflix deeply cared for their teen viewers. As discussed in chapter 1, teen-oriented television brands have often claimed not to talk down to teens and such claims draw in audiences beyond teens. The WB attracted parents by claiming teens could learn from its genuine depictions, and the @netflix Twitter account adopted similar tactics. The CW marketed a brazen portrayal of teen sexuality that brought in intrigued adults. However, claims to unflinchingly reveal the difficulties of young adult life also hail a teen demographic. In the case of @13ReasonsWhy, the message that high school life is hard and worthy of 121 serious attention, that teenagers contend with too much—often delivered personally in direct messages to Twitter users—addressed specifically those currently struggling in high school.

The @13ReasonsWhy account relied on the show’s young stars to augment their claim to solidarity with teens. @13ReasonsWhy posted three video features that addressed mental health and had young stars speak directly to audiences as if those audiences were their friends. Unlike on @netflix, an emphasis on friendship between audiences and the show’s stars emerged on @13ReasonsWhy. Fostering close access between stars and their fans, imagined as young and female, @13ReasonsWhy appealed to teen viewers.

On April 7, a tweet posted to the account asked viewers to “tell someone you care about them using #ReasonsWhyYouMatter” (13 Reasons Why 2017j). The video attached to this tweet featured clips of cast members, seemingly filmed from a phone on the red carpet of a 13 Reasons premiere event. Because the video starts with a card reading “no matter who you are, there’s always #ReasonsWhyYouMatter,” the video sets up an expectation that the actors will be talking about viewers like “you.” But that is not quite how the video plays out. Instead, each featured actor compliments and expresses gratitude for one of their castmates. Through discussing the cast members’ camaraderie on set while maintaining a direct address to “you,” the video works to collapse the difference between “you” and these stars.

A May 17 post followed the same pattern of establishing a connection between viewers and the 13 Reasons stars. In this post’s video, 13 Reasons stars appear to have 122 used their phones to record clips of “13 reasons why you matter to us.” The stars say that they “can’t thank you enough but want to try” (13 Reasons Why 2017o). Then, the actors congratulate viewers for “talking openly about things depicted in the show” to parents, friends, and teachers; for standing up “against bullying, sexual violence, and discrimination,” and for “tak[ing] care of each other and support[ing] each other, even though you are all strangers.” References to parents and teachers suggest that the “you” the actors have in mind is a teenager.

The actors also acknowledge “hilarious fan theories” and fan art, as well as general fan reactions to the story structure (you’re “not too mad at Clay for not listening to tapes faster”), favorite characters (“you like me, you really like me”), and actors (“you fell for my American accent”). Discussing fan activity in this way—as if stars and fans are in on the same jokes, references, thoughts, and emotions—the video constructs “being a fan” as “being a friend” of the stars and the show. While this May 17 video also went on @netflix, that account used different tweet text to introduce it than did

@13ReasonsWhy. The latter wrote, “There are more than #13ReasonsWhy the cast loves their fans, but here’s a start,” whereas the former wrote, “The cast of @13ReasonsWhy want to tell you something” (13 Reasons Why 2017o; Netflix US 2017j). The

@13ReasonsWhy account stressed the construction of their presumed young audience as fans and their cast members’ connection to them, while @netflix remained general in its mode of address. The emphasis on communion with the stars, of forging audiences as friends and confidantes of the show, remained unique to @13ReasonsWhy. Overall, the account’s focus on direct address, especially via celebrities that young adults were likely 123 fans of, and multiple affirmations that the it cares about teens and the issues they face, mark the space as teen oriented.

As mentioned at the beginning of this section, @13ReasonsWhy’s did not uplift teen fan engagement with 13 Reasons, which was heavily reported on in news media, and included recordings of prom invitations on 13 cassettes or painting nails blue to honor

Hannah (Sasso 2017; Rosman 2017). This decision is curious in light of the fact that, as discussed in chapter 2, Netflix used the high level of social activity surrounding 13

Reasons to elevate its brand’s cultural currency. It is worth pointing out that

@13ReasonsWhy was a controlled environment where Netflix could decide which fan reactions to uplift and which to ignore. Annemarie Navar-Gill has argued that television writers use Twitter to reward certain types of fan comments with their acknowledgment, according to their television brand’s needs. For instance, when in 2014 The CW was rebranding itself to a broader audience, including Hispanic demographics, Jane the

Virgin writers retweeted specifically fan tweets praising the show’s depiction of Latinx characters (Navar-Gill 2018, 422). Given the criticism Netflix received for 13 Reasons’s depiction of teen suicide and sexual violence, it is possible @13ReasonsWhy avoided fan interactions that might take a too-lighthearted interpretation of the show’s serious themes.

Due to this approach, however, the account maintained a distance from many young fans, which belied the friendship suggested in the “reasons why you matter to us video.”

124 Conclusion

In sum, the general @netflix account simultaneously provided interpretations of 13

Reasons as a show for social-media obsessed teens getting through high school, as a gripping mystery for adults to enjoy, and as important television for parents wanting to talk to their children about important issues. This account did not produce a constant audience position for 13 Reasons. Instead, it was happy to play to different ways it could draw interest to the property from different viewers. As criticism for the show arose from parents and health groups, the general @netflix Twitter account served as one of the main tools that Netflix used to manage perceptions of the Netflix brand, flipping messaging to portray 13 Reasons as a valuable ally to parents. Like The CW and Freeform, @netflix straddled the line between playing to the edgy appeal of the show’s engagement with teen issues and highlighting the family-friendly values of the show. Mostly, though, @netflix was not too interested in promoting 13 Reasons relative to other series, devoting only 11 posts to it throughout its first season.

During the same interval, @13ReasonsWhy treated teen audiences as subjects embedded in digital and social media who were dealing with serious issues. As the New

York Times noted, 13 Reasons is not unique from other “entertainment aimed at adolescents that depicts a mix of partying, cliques, sex, sexual violence and self-harm,” which includes cultural precursors such as Beverly Hills, 90210, Heathers, and Cruel

Intentions (Rosman 2017). Neither is 13 Reasons unique in promoting its frank depiction of teen issues as a way to appeal to audiences. More recently, HBO’s Euphoria (2019–)

125 has earned media buzz through its graphic depictions of teen sex and drug use, with HBO executives claiming the show makes 13 Reasons “look like an after-school special”

(Sandberg 2019a).

Like some of its television predecessors who hoped to prove their brand’s relevance through an association with young audiences, @13ReasonsWhy suggested that these frank depictions of teen life were not just sensational, salient material to draw in eyeballs, but the basis of a closeness or intimacy with teens. The Twitter account demonstrated a heavy emphasis on making personal connections with viewers: over four- fifths of posts were direct replies to Twitter users. However, the solemn lexicon

@13ReasonsWhy developed to formulate these responses hampered the account’s ability to make successful connections. At times, the account validated and engaged viewers in their reactions to the show. However, interactions between Twitter users and

@13ReasonsWhy were often rigid or tonally discordant. As a result, direct responses tended to break down rather than construct the façade that the 13 Reasons brand could relate to viewers as a friend.

To more successful effect, albeit sparsely employed, @13ReasonsWhy used the show’s stars to establish a connection with viewers. Videos featuring the show’s cast members equated being a 13 Reasons fan to being a friend of the cast members and show.

Though @13ReasonsWhy eschewed many of the familiar modes of targeting teens on social media, including fashion and appearance, pop culture references, and trendy lingo, the account used young stars to address a presumed youthful teen audience and

126 constructed those audiences as passionate supporters and friends of the show through their social media use.

I end with a note on diversity in 13 Reasons’s promotion on Twitter. Members of the mainstream press had remarked that the 13 Reasons cast is “impressively diverse,” “a great range…of sexualities, races and types beyond The CW’s wildest dreams”

(Greenblatt 2017; Miller 2017). In accordance with this wild level of diversity on the show, both @netflix and @13ReasonsWhy video features make direct reference to issues of diversity. The Langford and Minnette video-sharing tips for high school asks viewers to “be kind to girls” and also “be kind to boys and everyone in between” (Netflix US

2017h). The teenager and parent-child pairs chosen for @netflix’s video features demonstrate a concerted effort to represent different races and ethnicities (including three parents who speak in Spanish) to the extent that one Twitter user quipped, “Did anyone thought [sic] this was about race and culture?” (Netflix US 2017i). Unfortunately, despite the effort to make diversity more visible, these videos do not address race and cultural difference. Rather, bullying and mental health issues are presented as universal, uninformed by identity markers. In short, 13 Reasons promotional materials do not address race and culture outside of the frames set by a show about the interiority of a white, heterosexual, middle-class heroine. Nevertheless, the acknowledgment of and visibility of diversity remains an important aspect of the 13 Reasons social media voice.

127 Chapter 4 Romcoms, Hot Boys, and Strong Female Leads: Marketing To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before to Teens and Adults

Netflix acquired the global rights to distribute To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before in

March 2018, when the project was in its post-production phase (Kroll 2018). The movie, about teen Lara Jean’s faked relationship with popular kid Peter Kavinsky, premiered on the service on August 18, 2018. Both To All the Boys’s cast and the affiliations of its production company, Awesomeness, linked the project to a young adult audience.

Celebrities cast in the movie had a connection to teen and tween networks: for instance, actor Noah Centineo (the male lead, Peter Kavinsky) and actress Janel Parrish (Lara

Jean’s older sister, Margot) played main characters in Freeform’s The Fosters and Pretty

Little Liars respectively. Meanwhile, Anna Cathcart (Kitty, Lara Jean’s younger sister) had a supporting role in Disney Channel’s Descendants franchise. Thus, Netflix chose to distribute a project with strong associations to teen and tween television.

Equally notable was the fact that Awesomeness, a company well-known for its focus on teen and tween audiences, produced To All the Boys. Founder Brian Robbins defined Awesomeness’s target demographic at the time as “Gen Z, 12–21-year-olds and even young millennials” (Lopez 2017). When Viacom acquired Awesomeness in July

2018—a move which many interpreted as helping to strengthen Viacom’s own youth- centric brands Nickelodeon and MTV—Viacom executives called it a “digital media powerhouse for today’s most sought-after and hard-to-reach youth audiences” (Jarvey

128 2018). As a result, just prior to the film’s appearance on Netflix, Awesomeness had been linked in the news to two of the biggest youth brands, MTV and Nickelodeon.

Though on its social media accounts Netflix did not make use specifically of the cast and the project’s affiliation with teen media in order to promote To All the Boys to young audiences, many posts on the @netflix Instagram and YouTube accounts indicate that such an audience was pursued. Posts by these accounts focused on the actors’ personal lives and on young women’s lifestyle content like fashion and handlettering.

The voice of the accounts was youthful and excited, and it engaged with social media users as a fellow fan and friend. As will be explored in this chapter, matching the techniques of The CW and Freeform to a greater extent than it did with 13 Reasons promotion, with To All the Boys, Netflix created a teen girl space online that appealed to young audiences.

Yet, as with 13 Reasons, Netflix did not address the same audiences on all accounts. Especially by promoting To All the Boys as a romantic comedy, Netflix hailed older demographics as well. Following Netflix’s release of Kissing Booth in May 2018 and Set It Up in June 2018, many news outlets determined that Netflix was resurrecting the romcom, a genre long since abandoned by Hollywood in terms of theatrical releases

(Butler 2018; Mei 2018; Erbland 2018; Giorgis 2018; Saraiya 2018; Ferber 2018; Walsh

2018). It is unclear whether Netflix introduced this particular angle or simply adjusted its messaging to incorporate this positive reception. Nevertheless, across the company’s

Twitter accounts, posts that treated the movie as part of the romcom genre, rather than as a teen movie for the next generation, helped position it for a broader audience. 129 Highlighting To All the Boys’s similarities with romcoms from the ‘80s, ‘90s, or early

2000s, Netflix sold the movie to the older fans of the genre.

More specifically, Netflix utilized two versions of appeals to adults based on the romcom genre, as seen on the two accounts, @netflixfilm and @netflix. In May 2018, the

Netflix Twitter account @netflixfilm launched. A corollary @netflixfilm Instagram account launched in July 2018. @netflixfilm introduced To All the Boys with a measured, mature affection for a new “iconic romcom” full of enjoyable tropes and based on a bestselling book (Netflix Film 2018a, 2018c). Focused on situating the movie within film culture and cinematic genres, the account leaned toward hailing a much older audience interested in appraising the movie’s various attributes and production techniques.

Existing alongside a diffuse subculture of film criticism prevalent on Twitter in the second half of the 2010s, which has tended to favor male points of view (Donaldson

2017), @netflixfilm skewed more masculine. A bias toward the mystery and suspense genres, considered to be enjoyed mostly by men, is visible on the account. However, despite including some occasional ironic humor at the expense of the female-centric romcom genre, @netflixfilm both affirmed and defended To All the Boys as worthy of intellectual consideration and did not alienate older female viewers.

Meanwhile, @netflix on Twitter prioritized the emotional experience of watching, which has long been associated with female audiences, when promoting To All the Boys specifically and romcoms more broadly. In general, as of 2018, the Twitter account had shifted from the more general style it had established during the 13 Reasons promotion in

2017, toward a more meme-heavy, joking, often emotional to an excess, and at times boy 130 crazy voice. From the time To All the Boys first appeared on the service, the @netflix

Twitter account declared exuberant adoration for the movie and especially for Noah

Centineo/Peter Kavinsky. Similar statements were made on Netflix’s Instagram and

YouTube counterparts. However, references to romcom movies from the 2000s and earlier, as well as frequent mentions of being much older than the characters, marked posts on Twitter’s @netflix apart from those on Instagram and YouTube. The female audience hailed here was imagined as much more mature.

Social Media Key Method of Audience Hailed Website Promoting To All the Boys @netflixfilm Twitter and Situating the movie Adults, leans Instagram within film culture masculine @netflix Twitter Pleasure of Adult women watching romcoms @netflix YouTube and Attractive stars, Teen girls Instagram young women’s lifestyle

Figure 4.1: Summary of social media profiles considered in this chapter and their main marketing orientation.

By 2018, Netflix had created a family of social media accounts to target different genres, subcultures, and demographic groups. One such account was @netflixfamily on

Twitter. Though this account was not active until September 2018 and did not mention

To All the Boys, it seems likely that Netflix could offload most parent-centric promotion to this account rather than on the general @netflix or on @netflixfilm. None of the social media accounts discussed in this chapter sell To All the Boys to parents, in contrast to the 131 extensive measures Netflix took around 13 Reasons to draw in parents. For whatever reason, there did not seem to be a marketing strategy in place to draw in parents to To All the Boys, but, nonetheless, Netflix developed a space where it could put such appeals.

When the To All the Boys sequel came out in February 2020, @netflixfamily posted about it from the point of view of parents, recommending the movie under a list for

“family” viewing (Netflix Family 2020).

Though @netflixfilm and the various iterations of @netflix, where the majority of social media promotion for To All the Boys occurred,17 were each tailored to construct a mutual understanding with a specific imagined audience, there were also consistent themes across Netflix’s social accounts. Each profile’s promotion of the movie involved an engagement with topics of female empowerment and Asian American representation, marking the company as a progressive, relevant, and friendly brand in the process.

However, especially on Netflix Twitter accounts, rhetoric about saving the romcom and empowering women overshadows discussions about race. @netflix on Instagram and

YouTube present a more engaged inclusion of race, but posts primarily rely on popular feminist constructions of young women that limit their sphere of influence to individual improvement via fashion and beauty. Engaging more closely than chapter 3 with

Netflix’s framing of itself and its brand as socially progressive in promotional materials,

17 In contrast to its approach with 13 Reasons, Netflix did not make an exclusive Twitter account for To All the Boys (until it began promoting the sequel movie in 2019). However, Netflix did create a specific Instagram account for To All the Boys, @toalltheboysnetflix. I do not analyze this account in this chapter because it does not have a significant number of posts and it also does not differ much in tone from the @netflix Instagram. 132 this chapter critiques the capacity of direct address on social media to produce an illusory sense of intimacy and allyship.

The chapter is structured as follows. I break down the strategies Netflix employed across Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube in three respective sections. In particular, across these sections, I focus on how each profile imagined different audiences for To All the

Boys. I begin by looking at posts appearing in June 2018, when To All the Boys released its first teaser, and continue my examination through the end of September 2018, a month-and-a-half after the movie’s launch on the service. Through this survey, I find that

Netflix advertised To All the Boys on @netflixfilm to older romcom fans, promoted the film on its main Twitter account @netflix to younger romcom fans, and sold it on its

YouTube and Instagram account @netflix, as well as Instagram account

@toalltheboysnetflix, to teens and tweens. Lastly, I examine how each of the accounts

(hollowly) made appeals to audiences in terms of age-, gender-, and to a limited extent, race-based promises of diversity and inclusion.

Romcoms are the supreme genre? @netflixfilm’s promotion of To All the Boys

To All the Boys received a spotlight on @netflixfilm accounts in the two weeks following its release and, overall, was the subject of 40 tweets and three Instagram posts from June to September 2018.18 Of these tweets, 32 were replies to Twitter users reacting to the

18 The Instagram account posted far less than the Twitter account in this time period. 133 movie and framed @netflixfilm as “in on the same jokes” as viewers: @netflixfilm was rewatching the movie just like you (Netflix Film 2018x); @netflixfilm also noticed how often Peter Kavinsky says “woah” (Netflix Film 2018v); and @netflixfilm knew you would want to know what song was playing during the hot tub scene (Netflix Film

2018t). In other words, @netflixfilm demonstrated an understanding or intimacy with viewers through a shared knowledge about the movie, as did the other accounts discussed in this chapter. Unique to @netflixfilm was how it also continually referenced a general knowledge about movies that it imagined its followers would share.

In 2018, the largest portion of posts by @netflixfilm, whose Twitter and

Instagram iterations were almost identical, made recommendations to users about what could be watched on the service. The @netflixfilm accounts also regularly shared observations about how a movie on the service was produced. These recommendations and observations heightened a sense of intimacy with some users through constructing a movie buff personality. For instance, a July 18 Twitter thread shared “7 Essential

Filmmaking Tips, Inspired by Mark Duplass Films” (Netflix Film 2018h). A September

17 Twitter thread, meanwhile, used screenshots and gifs from eight movies to break down camera “angles that provide us real insight into a character’s state of being”

(Netflix Film 2018w). Other posts from these accounts might position a particular movie within a cultural context or in relation to film history using phrases such as “cult- favorite…as culturally relevant now as it was then,” or “one of the most influential independent films in history,” or “supremely underrated” (Netflix Film 2018s, 2018j,

2018l). The @netflix film posts discussed so far, even the most simple recommendation 134 posts, do more than promote what is on Netflix; they establish @netflixfilm as knowledgeable about and interested in films and filmmaking. Like the storied video rental shop worker of the ‘80s who has seen everything that can be rented there,

@netflixfilm appeared to know everything there is to know about movies found on the

Netflix catalog and excited to discuss them like an amateur critic.

The most substantial (as in, containing components like video or extended interviews that go beyond 280 characters) @netflixfilm posts about To All the Boys demonstrate a consistency with the critical tone discussed above. Specifically, four tweets and three Instagram posts promoting the movie emphasized the film’s formal attributes and production strategies. An August 28 Instagram post shared a photo from the process involved in designing Lara Jean’s room, along with offering up quotes from the production team (Netflix Film 2018u). Meanwhile, an August 24 Twitter thread shared an interview with Jenny Han, author of the To All the Boys book; here she discussed the experience of adapting a book to a movie (Netflix Film 2018r).

Importantly, the movie buff persona engaged with age, gender, and race through its decisions about which movies to tweet about, how it discussed those movies, and which accounts it responded to. When it comes to promoting To All the Boys,

@netflixfilm centered the creative process and thoughts of adults, rather than the more youthful point of view of the young celebrities and teenager characters featured in To All the Boys. Thus, @filmnetflix positioned To All the Boys for imagined older audiences who might enjoy a critical engagement with movies.

135 More generally, @netflixfilm’s emphasis on analyzing movies, whether how they are made, what they mean, or why they matter, placed it within the diffuse community of

Twitter users who discuss movies on the platform, colloquially referred to as Film

Twitter. In 2017, culture writer Kayleigh Donaldson described the admittedly ill-defined

“evolving amoeba” of Film Twitter as male-centric because of “the way certain films are discussed, or entire genres are dismissed immediately” in the majority of tweets

(Donaldson 2017). Donaldson further cited the genres of true crime and romance as examples of media “mostly consumed by women” that was “universally dismissed” and sneered at on Film Twitter. Due to the masculine digital practices and cultures already formed around discussing movies on Twitter, @netflixfilm was poised to speak to male audiences.

Interestingly, though many @netflixfilm posts demonstrated the more highbrow or intellectual engagement with filmmaking that is prevalent throughout Film Twitter, their tone was never stuffy. Rather @netflixfilm posts seemed personable and, at times, irreverent. Also, @netflixfilm generally engaged with any genre and type of movie, not just those receiving the highest critical acclaim. For instance, the @netflixfilm Twitter and Instagram accounts both consistently championed the romcom features newly available on the service, like Netflix original Set It Up (2018) and The Princess Diaries

(2001). Furthermore, @netflixfilm cultivated the point of view that Netflix was heroically reviving the romcom in long Twitter threads that boosted romcoms. These threads stated that “rom-coms are officially BACK,” and claimed that romcoms were the “supreme”

136 genre because of their relatable characters, satisfyingly predictable plots, great music and supporting casts (Netflix Film 2018d, 2018y).

The @netflixfilm accounts discussed romcoms using the approachable movie buff tone described above. To a Twitter user asking for romcom recommendations, the account advised watching Tramps “for something more indie” or How to Lose a Guy in

10 Days “for a classic” (Netflix Film 2018b). This post conveyed that some romcoms are classic, and therefore worth knowing about, whereas others are indie, with a high level of craftsmanship. @netflixfilm also described Set It Up as “a rom-com that subverts the trope that women can’t be career oriented AND find love” (Netflix Film 2018m), suggesting that the movie has cultural value because it pushes against gendered stereotypes. In a few other posts, @netflixfilm expressly defended romcoms against cultural devaluation. For instance, when a Twitter user asked for “a good trashy romcom,” the account replied, “Trashy?! Who you calling trashy?? Try Bachelorette, it’s not trashy but it’s REALLY good” (Netflix Film 2018e). Overall, @netflixfilm posts indicated that the romcom, which has historically been denigrated due to its association with female audiences, is worthy of attention. Notably, however, the posts tend to elevate the romcom, speaking less to those who are happy to see a “trashy romcom” than to those who might need convincing that a romcom is “worth” seeing. In other words,

@netflixfilm felt the need to use justifying phrases such as “Yes, it’s a rom-com, but…”

(Netflix Film 2018g). Thus, the accounts’ defense of romcoms is geared toward swaying male audiences and participants of Film Twitter who might look down at romcoms and toward reassuring female audiences that their tastes are valued by the brand. 137 To All the Boys was mentioned in multiple threads about and recommendations for romcoms, indicating @netflixfilm’s predominant focus on positioning the movie as another romcom (rather than a teen movie). Multiple posts on the accounts that speak to the cultural and critical appeal of other romcoms helped promote To All the Boys as interesting to adult film fans. Breaking with its tendency to center male audiences,

@netflixfilm showed an emphasis on selling To All the Boys as a romcom to females specifically in a long Twitter thread. Still, the perspective conveyed in this thread is certainly much older than that of a teenager, in keeping with @netflixfilm’s consistent appeal to mature audiences. The Twitter thread in question shared an “emotional journey” of watching the film (Netflix Film 2018p). Of five observations shared about To

All the Boys, one was “How old is @noahcent? / Answer: *wipes bead of sweat from forehead* 22 years old. *phew*” (Netflix Film 2018p). The account would repeat this anxiety about whether Noah Centineo is an appropriate object of affection for an adult woman in other tweets. Another observation, paired with a screenshot of John Corbett, stated that “CARRIE SHOULD HAVE PICKED AIDAN,” in reference to the actor’s character on Sex in the City (Netflix Film 2018p). This tweet thread imagined that the

@netflixfilm audience would share reactions related to the cultural context of an older woman. Thus, @netflixfilm promoted To All the Boys to adult women.

In addition to gendered and age-based appeals, @netflixfilm incorporated appeals related to race, but these were much more vague. The @netflixfilm posts about To All the

Boys periodically alluded to the movie’s foregrounding of Asian Americans. The importance of inclusivity was touched on in the aforementioned Jenny Han interview, for 138 example. Han is quoted as saying, “When someone tells me this is the movie they wished they had as a teen—that makes me so happy” (Netflix Film 2018r). Though it is highly likely Han is referring here to the casting of an Asian American lead, there is no specific mention of race in her interview. Likewise, the @netflixfilm account on Instagram shared a post directing Instagram users to a Story where Lana Condor and Janel Parrish “discuss casting and representation,” but did not use the words race or Asian (Netflix Film 2018q).

The Twitter account more concretely asserted importance of Asian representation when it posted about the release of Crazy Rich Asians. The tweet points out that the last

Hollywood production featuring an Asian-led cast was released 25 years ago. It continues: “of the 100 top 2017 films, 2/3 didn’t have a single Asian woman. / So yes — we need more films like Crazy Rich Asians. We needed them yesterday” (Netflix Film

2018n). This observation provided an opening for the account to later recommend watching Crazy Rich Asians and To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before as “an A+ double feature” (Netflix Film 2018o). Here, @netflixfilm indirectly suggested a connection between empowering Asian Americans and Netflix producing the movies “we need.”

However, @netflixfilm foregrounded gender over race. Numerous threads about the Bechdel Test, female filmmakers, and working as a woman in media overshadowed posts about other forms of representation. One tweet described Set It Up as a “written by a woman (Katie Silberman), starring badass women (Lucy Liu & Zoey Deutch), and directed by a badass woman” (Netflix Film 2018m). In contrast to vague allusions to diverse casting in other tweets, such posts clearly and loudly celebrated female empowerment. Meanwhile, in this and other posts about Set It Up, Lucy Liu is presented 139 as a badass woman while her identity as a significant Asian American actress is overlooked. Similarly, @netflixfilm promoted issues of gender over those of race when describing Nappily Ever After, a movie that centers Black hair culture, as “the story of a woman who learns that sometimes the only way to stand up for what you believe in is by getting knocked down in the first place” (Netflix Film 2018i). While Black women can easily recognize the focus on their communal practices and values reflected in the movie’s title and trailer, the promotional post’s generalized message of empowering all women made it more accessible to white women. Thus, rather than having a robust, socially aware impetus, @netflixfilm’s cultivation of a liberal tone when discussing race

(or ignoring it) might be interpreted as catering to adult, white audiences.

In contrast to the @netflix Twitter account in 2017, which also hailed adults,

@netflixfilm did not balance an adult point of view with a few posts to attract younger audiences. Additionally, @netflixfilm made a more specific appeal to a coherent taste sensibility related to filmgoing as opposed to @netflix’s more general promotion to all audiences. The taste sensibility @netflixfilm constructed on Twitter and Instagram included assumptions about age and gender, which speak to how demographics have been an integral part of Netflix’s promotional efforts on social media.

If you like 90s romcoms…: @netflix Twitter promotion of To All the Boys

140 The Twitter @netflix account posted almost exclusively about To All the Boys for weeks following the movie’s premiere and had the most expansive promotion for the movie of all Netflix social profiles. Like the @netflixfilm accounts the @netflix frequently used memes and humor to engage with their followers and promote the movie. Both

@netflixfilm and @netflix on Twitter also often replied directly to users’ reactions to To

All the Boys. In other words, through both social media profiles, Netflix constructed a mutual understanding or closeness with viewers. However, in contrast to @netflixfilm’s tendency toward cerebral, critical engagement, the primary @netflix account favored an emotional, exuberant relationship to media.

Although skewed much further than @netflixfilm to a young adult point of view, the @netflix Twitter account nonetheless still invited adult women to partake in enjoying

To All the Boys. It did so by highlighting how, (1) the movie was fun because it contributes to a lineage of romcoms, which adult women have come to know and love,

(2) Peter K. is dreamy, but adults should know better than to fall in love with him, and (3)

Lana Condor is an impressive young lady, but so are the older female directors and screenwriters who worked on the movie. In other words, @netflix on Twitter qualified promotion for To All the Boys in favor of the perspective of adult women.

Like @netflixfilm, @netflix also tweeted about representation, diversity, and inclusivity, but the posts had many limitations. Establishing a connection between romcoms and empowering women much like @netflixfilm, @netflix often merged and overshadowed the issue of gender representation with race representation. Moreover, in foregrounding certain ideas about what women enjoy about media, @netflix created a 141 strongly heterosexual tone. More specifically, the account expressed a repeated sexual desire for male actors and a strictly platonic appreciation of female actresses. Thus,

@netflix on Twitter privileged the experiences of white, heterosexual women on the account.

Figure 4.2: A tweet from @netflix. Meme of two brawny arms grasping hands shows the rallying together of emotional teens and adults who “should know better” around Noah Centineo. This tweet captures the combination of audiences @netflix on Twitter appealed to.

142 In contrast to @netflixfilm, @netflix was not concerned with appraising or categorizing media. Rather, it was focused on helping you find “your next obsession”

(Netflix US 2018u). When the @netflix Twitter account talked about romcoms, the focus was on highlighting the pleasure they provided. For example, both @netflixfilm and

@netflix promoted the addition of Princess Diaries and its sequel on the service.

However, @netflixfilm chose to do so by reminding viewers that Golden Globe-winning actress Sandra Oh, recently prominent due to her appearance in the popular and acclaimed Killing Eve (2018–), was featured in the movie (Netflix Film 2018f). In contrast, @netflix shared video features and screenshots about how good a friend supporting character Lilly Moscovitz was and how cool Julie Andrews was as the queen

(Netflix US 2018j; Netflix US 2018e). Thus, one account emphasized an actress’s performance, while the other emphasized its delightful characters. Similarly, when Reese

Witherspoon shared on Twitter and Instagram that she liked Set It Up, @netflixfilm replied to her tweet with “Set It Up just received the highest critical acclaim possible”;

@netflix, meanwhile, took a screenshot of Witherspoon’s Instagram Story post and wrote

“so glad you liked @SetItUpNetflix! Didn’t it make you want pizza real bad??? ”

(Netflix Film 2018k; Netflix US 2018c).

In contrast to @netflixfilm’s appeal to older movie fans, @netflix presented the

To All the Boys’s enjoyability through the emotional language of young women. The type of language I am referring to was captured succinctly in the following post, which was retweeted from a Twitter user. In this case, the user wrote that he and a friend, “two grown ass adult men with thriving careers and robust sex lives, really liked” To All the 143 Boys. The user shared a screenshot of a text message with his tweet. In this text, the conversation proceeds as follows: “‘Because I’m in love with you Lara Jean’ fucking melted me / I screamed / i rewound back several times / When she finally got in the hot tub I was clawing the skin off my face”; @netflix replied simply, “CAN RELATE”

(Netflix US 2018q). As the Twitter user pointed out, there is a supposed discrepancy between being a “grown ass adult man” and reacting to the movie like so. The Twitter user implies that the opposite of professional, sexually active man—namely an adolescent woman—should be engaging with To All the Boys instead. In tweets and retweets that sound like the above text conversation, @netflix established a tone resembling what is imagined to be how young women talk. This enthusiastic, emotional tone of @netflix led a Twitter user to ask, “why does netflix tweet like a 16 y/o girl,” to which, seemingly unconcerned, @netflix replied with a gif of a cat in a pink wig typing on a keyboard

(Netflix US 2018o). Combining symbols of internet and contemporary culture like a cat and pink hair, @netflix suggested writing like a teen means having a high degree of digital fluency and is nothing to be ashamed of. Conversely, the post also supported the idea that the impulses of girls are as uncontrollable as an animal stomping on some keys.

Allowing for both positive and negative readings of teens, @netflix tweets never fully embraced teen audiences.

Especially through its categorization of To All the Boys as a romcom, @netflix on

Twitter hailed women beyond their teenage years. In its first post about To All the Boys on June 21, @netflix released a teaser trailer that introduced the movie as “the next truly great romantic comedy” (Netflix US 2018a) rather than, for instance, a teen movie. The 144 streaming service also established itself as having a leading role in releasing movies oriented toward female audiences. The @netflix account asked for “more respect” for romcoms not because they include or are liked by award-winning actresses, but because of their enjoyability, their “dream boat” romantic interests, and their “strong female lead[s]” (Netflix US 2018f). While such descriptions of the broad appeal of romcoms could easily hail both younger and older audiences, other tweets from the account about romcoms referenced a community of romcom fans with a long-lasting familiarity and love for the genre—who are presumably older. As one example, a July 31 post shared a compilation of Julia Roberts’ dramatic expressions from some of her most recognizable romcom performances from movies released 20 to 30 years ago, including Pretty Woman

(1990) and Notting Hill (1999); the post was labeled, “julia’s in her feelings” (Netflix US

2018d).

Like @netflixfilm, @netflix on Twitter also commented on the many romcoms

Netflix released in 2018, but rather than posting long threads that convince audiences of the appeal of romcoms, the account simply posted a gif of Noah Centineo laughing with the caption “when you hear someone say ‘they don’t make great romantic comedies anymore’” (Netflix US 2018g). The implication here is both that Netflix is making great romcoms (that star Centineo) and that romcoms have continued to hold appeal for audiences all along. In other words, a resurgence of romcoms does not need to be explained to the followers of @netflix, hailed as longtime fans of the genre.

Centineo was a central figure included in To All the Boys promotion. Beyond heightening excitement around how fun To All the Boys and romcoms in general are, 145 @netflix on Twitter marketed the movie by consistently tweeting about, tweeting at, and retweeting from Centineo and Lana Condor, the instantly popular leads of the movie. In the following sections, I look in more depth how, through positioning itself as a friend and fan of Centineo and Condor, the account framed and hailed young and adult women audiences. On one hand, @netflix appeared to take on the role of a teen girl idolizing the two actors. On the other hand, @netflix balanced tweets about Centineo and Condor with others about older celebrities and creatives, which would appeal to older women.

Figure 4.3: In the weeks following To All the Boys’s release, @netflix focused almost all of its attention on the movie and on its male lead. (Netflix US 2018m)

First, I argue @netflix expressed a profound attraction to Centineo and his character Peter Kavinsky to attract female viewers. Between June and September 2018,

@netflix tweeted 131 times about To All the Boys. A large portion of these, 70 tweets altogether, were part of a participatory campaign where Netflix would post love confessions submitted by anonymized Twitter users.19 But, excluding this user-generated campaign, 24 out of 61, or almost 40% of @netflix’s remaining tweets, were about

19 The campaign plays on the main plotline of the movie: Lara Jean’s love letters are sent out to her past crushes. 146 desiring or swooning over Centineo/Peter K. The account even changed its bio to read

“this is now a Peter Kavinsky stan account” (Netflix US 2018m). Unlike @netflixfilm,

@netflix did not express distress that Centineo might be too young to receive such attention, though the meme from figure 4.2 said adults “should know better” than teenagers and not fall in love with him. Fixating on Centineo in this way, @netflix’s promotional strategy appealed to both younger and older audiences who would be attracted to him, typically imagined female.

In general, in 2018 the account frequently sexualized and romanticized male characters and actors. Often the male actors featured were connected to Netflix’s teen properties, especially 13 Reasons and On My Block. Ross Butler “stars” in multiple tweets; for instance, an August 27 tweet replied with a fawning gif to a video he posted of himself jamming on a guitar while shirtless (Netflix US 2018r). Two days later, a graphic titled “choose 3 snacks” featured a bingo grid of teen characters from shows like To All the Boys, 13 Reasons Why, Riverdale, Dear White People, and Kissing Booth. The graphic asked viewers to choose the three most attractive actors (Netflix US 2018t).

Despite this frequent performance of attraction to celebrities specifically from Netflix’s teen catalog, the account’s boy craziness is not reserved for the youngest actors. In

September, for example, the account posted a video of “every time Jax was shirtless on

Sons of Anarchy. You’re welcome” (Netflix US 2018v). Jax Teller from Sons of Anarchy is a father of two in his 30s. Thus, @netflix hailed both young and older women.

Sexual and romantic attraction is almost exclusively directed toward men across the @netflix account, constituting a female heterosexual gaze. The one instance in which 147 women were presented as an object of desire is in the aforementioned “3 snacks” graphic.

Three actresses were options among nine total featured. Feelings of swooning or arousal are absent from all other posts about female actress from Summer 2018. Thus, it is notable that queer desire is excluded by omission from @netflix and a loud, heterosexual female desire reigns supreme.

Instead of being presented as desirable in a romantic sense, Lana Condor/Lara

Jean featured in many of @netflix’s tweets about To All the Boys as an aspirational figure. Four tweets profess admiration and affection for the actress and the character she plays. In one of these tweets, @netflix wrote, “She is my queen and I would lay down my life for her.” Notably, this tweet is in reply to a Twitter user who protested how often the account posts about Peter K, “but like I have the fattest crush on Lara Jean” (Netflix US

2018k). Netflix does not acknowledge into the potential connotations of sexual attraction in this tweet. Beyond simply describing her as amazing, @netflix admired Lara Jean for her performance of feminine culture, including her sense of fashion, her stationary collection, and her nicely decorated room. @netflixfilm had posted images about the production design of Lara Jean’s bedroom. Similarly, @netflix shared a video on the same subject. However, @netflix focused on how the space’s messiness is relatable and how “Fans agree: Lara Jean's bedroom is #goals” and the “real heartthrob of To All The

Boys I've Loved Before” (Netflix US 2018s). Lara Jean’s bedroom, from the @netflix point of view, is something to aim to have rather than an interesting artistic component of the movie to discuss. In other words, Lara Jean was presented as a relatable role model for young women. 148 The Twitter account adopted a similar tone of platonic admiration around other women connected to young adult properties, like Shannon Purser and Millie Bobby

Brown from Stranger Things.20 The theme of girl power was a significant strategy to attract teen girls to The WB and Freeform, encouraging them to feel powerful and confident. @netflix on Twitter adopted a similar strategy through promoting Condor and others. Though a special emphasis is placed on tweeting about these younger celebrities, in September 2018 alone the account proclaimed a selection of actresses in their 30s and

40s were also their “queens,” including Claire Foy, Thandie Newton, Regina King, and

Rose Byrne (Netflix US 2018z, 2018aa, 2018y, 2018w). Overall, @netflix hailed both younger and older women with appeals to impressive female actresses.

The @netflix Twitter account also promoted Condor’s role in increasing Asian

American representation. However, in multiple posts about Condor, the issue of gender representation eclipse that of race representation. The account replied to a few Twitter users stating how much it meant “to see an Asian girl as a romantic lead” and how

Condor helped “girls like me feel seen” (Netflix US 2018h; Netflix US 2018n).

Additionally, the account posted a video interview with Condor in which she talks about the exceptional opportunity to audition for and star in a romcom with an Asian American lead and how she hopes the movie will inspire Asian American young girls to “star in their own romcom” (Netflix US 2018l). However, in parallel to @netflixfilm’s bias for supporting women’s representation above race representation, on @netflix, how To All

20 Purser would star (with Centineo) in Sierra Burgess is a Loser one month after To All the Boys’s release. In parallel to To All the Boys promotion, @netflix’s promotion for Burgess centered on Purser’s relatability and excellence, along with Centineo’s attractiveness. 149 the Boys contributes to diverse representation receives as much attention as how Condor empowers women. The first tweet about To All the Boys highlighted that women’s work is underrepresented in moviemaking when it listed the following: “Starring Lana Condor.

/ Written by Sofia Alvarez. / Directed by Susan Johnson.” (Netflix US 2018a). To All the

Boys is positioned as remarkable for its female contributors and female audience, rather than celebrated for casting an Asian American lead.

In constructing @netflix as an inviting space for romcom fans where the genre was not constantly defended but rather unabashedly enjoyed, the account went further than @netflixfilm to embrace and center female audiences. However, not all its overtures to women were convincing. Notably, posts about Peter K. vastly outnumbered those about Lara Jean and the account centered a straight white male character in spite of claims to wanting to promote diversity and female empowerment. While including something for different segments of women, the account generally appealed to the broadest possible audience of women.

Charm Battles, Crossovers, and Glam Aesthetics: @netflix Instagram and YouTube Promotion of To All the Boys

The @netflix Instagram account shared three major attributes with the Twitter account.

First, the Instagram account also presented a boy crazy persona. For example, a few days after To All the Boys’s premiere, the account posted a screenshot of an iPhone’s camera roll. It began with photographs of Riverdale actor Cole Sprouse and then featured images

150 of Noah Centineo photographs. The account wrote in the post that this screenshot was an

“exclusive look at how my life is changing right now,” implying that the account used to be obsessed with Sprouse but now was fixated on Centineo (Netflix US on IG 2018f).

The second similarity the Twitter and Instagram accounts shared was an oft expressed admiration for female role models. Instagram’s @netflix celebrated them in particular because of their relatability, empowerment, and good fashion sense. Recalling its Twitter counterpart, a post on @netflix on Instagram with a fashion-editorial style portrait of Condor described her as “a fierce queen” (Netflix US on IG 2018h). The account also frequently celebrated features in women’s and fashion magazines about

Netflix’s other “fierce queens” from teen-oriented fare such as Dear White People, Sierra

Burgess is a Loser, and Insatiable.

Third, @netflix on both Twitter and Instragram often promoted teen properties.

However, here the two accounts also notably diverge. Twitter’s @netflix promoted all genres found on Netflix. In contrast, Netflix’s Instagram posts exclusively focused on teen-oriented shows and movies. Accounting for this and further differences between the accounts, this section examines the main types of posts made by @netflix on Instagram, focusing in particular on those that promote To All the Boys. Because Netflix in general posted much less frequently to Instagram accounts as compared to Twitter accounts, posts analyzed span an extra two months, from June through December 2018. This section also comments on Netflix’s use of YouTube in the same time period in terms of marketing To All the Boys. Though the account “Netflix” on YouTube resembles

@netflix on Twitter to the extent that it hails all audiences rather than just teens, an 151 analysis of “Netflix” YouTube videos promoting To All the Boys is included in this section because many of the same videos were posted on Instagram’s @netflix, but not as often on Twitter,21 and because YouTube and Instagram marketing for To All the Boys shares the same characteristics.

On Instagram, a post or video almost always was about a teen property and made references to other teen properties. In a Princess Diaries meme, for instance, Princess

Mia appears shocked that Riverdale actor KJ Apa covers up “a bunch of hot tattoos” to play character Archie. Similarly, in another meme, text stating that Riverdale actress

“Vanessa Morgan was in 2 episodes of [Canadian teen drama] Degrassi,” is combined with an image of Lara Jean from To All the Boys getting smacked in the face with a pillow. An alternate of this Lara Jean meme in another post is paired instead with the text, teen movie “Mean Girls came out 14 years ago” (Netflix US on IG 2018e, 2018m,

2018j). In these and most other posts on Instagram, To All the Boys is linked to multiple teen properties in such a way that the characters and actors almost seem to interact with each other.

Furthermore, the Instagram account acted like a person with an established set of attitudes related to teen-oriented properties. For instance, @netflix performed a strong attraction to Riverdale actor Cole Sprouse in multiple posts, establishing him as its favorite over time. Referencing this preference, the account first introduced the To All the

Boys teaser trailer, depicting the delivery of Lara Jean’s love letters to all her crushes,

21 It is possible that differences in the affordances of the platforms might account for variations in what was posted, with Twitter receiving fewer videos simply because the website is best suited for verbal communication. However, I argue that tone and style also contribute to substantial differences between Twitter and the other two Netflix accounts. 152 with the caption “Wow, so glad no one leaked my love letters to @colesprouse” (Netflix

US on IG 2018a). Furthermore, like in the post mentioned at the beginning of this section, promotion of To All the Boys included a narrative of Centineo replacing Sprouse as the account’s new favorite. Thus, the account folded the movie into its on-going discourse on Instagram and constructed a long-standing relationship and attachment to teen-oriented properties.

Both the YouTube and Instagram accounts established formats for promoting teen properties in a uniform way. For instance, to market To All the Boys in summer 2018,

Netflix on YouTube posted a “Kiss & Tell” video, in which the cast members kiss an item while blindfolded and try to guess what it is. The account also launched “Charm

Battle,” a feature in which the cast members tried to be the “most charming using cheesy pick up lines” (Netflix 2018c, 2018d). These formats would go on to be used with such teen properties as The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, Elite, Riverdale, On My Block, and

The Last Summer. By early 2019, other formats were launched as well, including “Battle of the Boyfriends,” many of which starred Centineo’s characters “competing” against other boyfriends from Netflix shows, and various iterations of videos that play on the cultural differences of multinational casts—called “Word Battle” or “Burn Battle,” the content of these videos is almost the same although Netflix did not settle on a single title.

The videos were often posted on both YouTube and Instagram, especially after June

2018, when the release of the IGTV feature made longer-form video more viable on the

153 platform. On both social media websites, the videos are linked together via hashtags or playlists, creating a de-facto library of Netflix’s teen-oriented collection.22

Netflix also launched an Instagram-specific format called the #GlamstheticSeries.

The #GlamstheticSeries provides portraits of select cast members in the style of fashion magazines, setting up fashion as an important component of the account. Though

Instagram and YouTube both balance relatable and aspirational depictions of celebrities, the tone of the YouTube videos is more goofy and filled with a lot of laughter on the part of the featured performers. Mimicking popular promotion segments with celebrities that mainstream publications had previously developed, including Vanity Fair’s actors teaching slang videos, and Buzzfeed’s actors reading tweets videos, they are designed to display an element of unpredictability and to highlight competition between cast members in order to capture strong in-the-moment reactions. In other words, the videos generally capture unfiltered interactions between actors rather than offering polished presentations. The #GlamstheticSeries is more refined and aspirational in nature, dressing up the actors to achieve a look that would be hard to capture for a regular teen.

22 Twitter has the same hashtag functionality, but as far as I have researched, these videos do not appear on Netflix Twitter accounts, nor are they tagged together. 154

Figure 4.4: To All the Boys posts tagged #GlamstheticSeries on Instagram. (Netflix US on IG 2018h)

Ultimately, balancing presentations of teen stars as relatable people that you can interact with like a friend with depictions of them as fashionable, aspirational figures featured in magazines, Netflix drew heavily on the star power of actors to promote shows to teens. Though the @netflix Twitter account also built up a fondness and appreciation of actors like Centineo and Condor, Instagram’s @netflix showed a much higher level of investment in young celebrities. In addition to posting Netflix-produced videos and photographs, the @netflix Instagram prominently featured profiles on actors from magazines like Seventeen and Teen Vogue. In this way, Netflix offered a level of glossy aesthetic familiar from CW and Freeform shows. Additionally, @netflix on Instagram regularly posted photos of actors from their personal lives, many of them sourced from the actors’ own social media accounts. Much like The CW did with the Social Directory,

@netflix extended its brand into the personal lives of actors and served as a bridge connecting fans to the actors they might idolize. Further, much like Freeform’s Facebook page, the account also positioned itself as a fan and friend of these celebrities through 155 following along with their daily experiences, tagging them, and complimenting them.

Overall, the account encouraged audiences to feel closer to the stars, deepening their connection to Netflix properties, at the same time that the stars seemed like figures worth aspiring to. Simply put, much like The CW and Freeform, the Instagram account made itself relevant and relatable to an imagined teen audience through its promotion of actors from teen-oriented properties.

Figure 4.5: This post on @netflix Instagram, featuring a collection of shirtless photos of Riverdale actor KJ Apa, demonstrates how the account pulled images from multiple actors’ social media accounts. (Netflix US on IG 2018l)

156 To a greater extent than either @netflixfilm or Twitter’s @netflix, the Instagram account posted about seasonal events and news related to diversity in media, including issues of gender, race, sexuality, mental health, and ability. In June, for example, the account posted about Pride month. One such post featured a photograph from actress

Kate Walsh, showing her with two other 13 Reasons actors at a Pride festival (Netflix US on IG 2018c). Netflix also launched “Strong Black Lead” in June, an initiative (complete with its own set of @strongblacklead social media accounts) to “talk authentically with the black audience” (Anderson 2018). The launch is unnoted on @netflixfilm and on the

@netflix Twitter account, but Instagram’s @netflix posted about it with a photo of Black actors from 13 Reasons captioned “so many reasons to be obsessed with these strong black leads” (Netflix US on IG 2018d). The @netflix Instagram account also posted videos with cast and crew from teen properties discussing issues of diversity. Between

June and September, in addition to the Instagram counterpart of the video interview with

Lana Condor about Asian American romantic leads, the account also posted features about One Day at a Time LGBTQ representation and about representation of autism in

Atypical (Netflix US on IG 2018g, 2018b, 2018k). The Condor and Atypical videos all had the same “Seen & Heard” intro card. The videos were also posted on YouTube.

Though representation of diverse identities on Netflix’s general Instagram and

YouTube accounts was more extensive than it was on Twitter, it was not necessarily better. The posts on @netflix on Instagram could be interpreted as largely performative because they sometimes played up diversity in ways that were not evident in the Netflix programs themselves. For instance, the post mentioned above depicted four actors who 157 were called Black leads, even though only one of them had a significant role in all four seasons of 13 Reasons. In fact, Netflix had not empowered all of these young actors to the point of making them leads on shows. Thus, the inclusivity available on Netflix shows is often less extensive than the Instagram profile would have it appear. As with

@netflixfilm and @netflix on Twitter, the socially just tone of the account has the purpose of drawing teen viewers, who Netflix imagines to be invested in such issues.

In sum, reiterating strategies Freeform adopted to facilitate a “friendship” with its audiences on social media, @netflix on Instagram acted and wrote like a teen who could not get enough of heartthrob actors, wanted to be like the stars, and was inclusive of diverse identities. Through hailing teen audiences in this way, Netflix set up a model for how its teen audiences should or could act. This model was often very narrow. For instance, much like The CW and Freeform sold glamor and fashion as a way for young women to feel confident, @netflix suggested that young women could resolve any issue by improving their personal style. A typical post on the account in summer 2018 paired a glamorous portrait of a dressed-up actress with quotations about personal challenges she has overcome. For example, @netflix featured an image from a Refinery 29 profile of

Dear White People actress Logan Browning, writing in the post’s description that

Browning had “a v real conversation” with the magazine about “about identity, ethnicity, representation, and personal style” (Netflix US on IG 2018i). The post also excerpted a story from the profile about how Browning wanted to dress more like the kids in school instead of how her mother wanted her to dress. Though there might be racial or socioeconomic reasons that informed how Browning dressed, those reasons are obscured. 158 The focus instead is on how her “personal style came in” as an individual rather than a member of several cultural groups. Like the CW woman and the Freeform girl, a Netflix actress—at least presented through the service’s Instagram account—drew her strength and power through how she dressed her body.

Despite such limitations, the @netflix Instagram account offered somewhat inclusive versions of teen girlhood, that expand on social media posts by The CW and

Freeform from the early 2010s. Netflix did not push consumption as a way to buy confidence as much as the linear networks.23 Furthermore, The CW had ignored fan- favorite pairings of same-sex characters when promoting The Vampire Diaries and

Freeform social media posts described the Pretty Little Liars actresses’ attractiveness strictly in platonic terms even though there are queer characters and couples within the show itself. Though @netflix on Instagram predominantly featured a heteronormative perspective based on its construction of an infatuation with a few male stars, occasionally the account celebrated a female-female pairing on one of their shows, had a male star flirt with a male star, or described a female star as sexually attractive. Similarly, while Netflix on Instagram overall maintained the narrow beauty standard established on The CW and

Freeform of skinny and tall with long hair, the account also occasionally acknowledged size inclusivity by posting affirming profiles with a rare bigger actress. Embellishing the efforts of the teen television networks that preceded it, Netflix’s social media sparingly

23 Netflix has not had to rush into advertiser sponsorship deals due to its subscription-based business model. However, in 2019 and 2020 Netflix did develop partnerships with companies such as NYX and Sephora. Promotion for the To All the Boys sequel included a video of the movie’s crew taking fans on a shopping spree and pursuing a makeover at Sephora. 159 encouraged young women’s empowerment, and highlighted their ability to be as accomplished as Netflix’s teen stars.

Conclusion

As shown throughout this chapter, the social media accounts Netflix used to promote To

All the Boys each hailed different audiences on the basis of age and gender. Drawing on the imagined taste sensibilities of filmgoers, @netflixfilm made appeals to older male and female audiences. Lengthy threads about the romcom’s history sought to make To All the

Boys relevant to male viewers on this account. Meanwhile, references to female-led shows from the early 2000s drew in older women.

Whereas @netflixfilm on Twitter and Instagram matched in terms of style, tone, and subjects addressed, @netflix on Twitter was distinct from its corresponding

Instagram. On Twitter, @netflix hailed women both young and old through referencing and celebrating romcoms, swooning over male actors, and extolling female actresses. On

Instagram, @netflix’s sustained creation of a context based entirely on teen-oriented properties hailed teen girls. The distinctions between @netflix on Twitter and Instagram suggest that Netflix exploited variations in the presumed audience demographics for different platforms. Instagram users are expected to be younger than Twitter users and, correspondingly, the general @netflix profile has a much younger focus. Likewise,

Netflix made “Netflix Futures” and “Netflix Jr.” profiles for YouTube, which target

160 tween and child audiences respectively, but there are no equivalent accounts on Twitter and Instagram. Thus, Netflix appears to expect to find its youngest audiences mostly on

YouTube.

In addition to allowing Netflix to promote To All the Boys in a more targeted way to a select group, the social media accounts also offered ways of connecting certain shows and movies that could be perceived as going together. On @netflixfilm and

Twitter’s @netflix, To All the Boys promotion went hand in hand with recommendations for other romcoms. On the @netflix Instagram account, To All the Boys was tied to various Netflix teen properties in a more significant way. Memes that asked users to pick their favorite ship from a selection of different shows and movies, YouTube videos that have the same format for every teen property, or photographs of actors from different

Netflix properties hanging out together, all create a sense that Netflix teen shows and movies exist as one unit. Simply put, the shows are branded together as if they belong to a teen network like The CW or Freeform.

At first glance, Netflix’s promotion strategy might seem entirely different from that of The CW or Freeform. With its focus on personalization, Netflix does not appear interested in demographics whereas the teen-oriented networks appear interested solely in the teen demographic. However, as we have seen, The CW and Freeform constructed a teen sensibility that broadened the appeal of teen TV to adults. Much of the two networks’ marketing simultaneously hailed younger and older audiences. Likewise,

Netflix’s promotional efforts on social media made use of demographic expectations

161 based on audiences’ age and gender to market its teen-oriented properties for a distinct groups of viewers.

Though how Netflix social media accounts are different from each other is of most interest to this chapter, how they are all the same also deserves some attention. The accounts promoting To All the Boys shared several key strategies: Most importantly, to varying degrees, each account claimed to be diverse. Netflix promoted its Asian

American lead to all audiences and almost all reviews of the movie also celebrated this casting. The response of media critics to To All the Boys indicates how a brand of cultural inclusivity has come to be culturally valued.

Reviews agreed that To All the Boys is a “quietly revolutionary” movie that

“triumphantly divorces” itself from “lily-white world of rom-coms” and “earn[s] extra points for casting Asian American actress Lana Condor” (Clark 2018; Debruge 2018;

Grady 2018; Mei 2018). Some reviewers described Netflix’s effort to release a teen romcom with an Asian American lead as further testament that the service has continued to put out shows and movies with diverse casts (Clark 2018). Cosmopolitan’s entertainment writer Peggy Truong called To All the Boys “yet another triumphant moment for Asian-American audiences” and added that in 2019, Netflix would “bless the world with Always Be My Maybe, written by and starring Ali Wong and Randall Park,” which would continue this trend (Truong 2018). Further, Truong claimed Netflix’s release of To All the Boys made her feel “hopeful and supported,” like Hollywood has her back (Truong 2018).

162 In its marketing on social media, Netflix promoted the narrative that it had a special commitment to producing programming with diverse casts. With a primary function of promoting the Netflix service, or “earning points” for the Netflix brand,

Netflix’s claims to support Asian American and other audiences can be understood as an important part of the streaming service’s strategy to build up a sense of closeness and trust between Netflix and users, alongside other modes of address Netflix employed across social media accounts—among them, sharing jokes, insights, and references; replying directly to social media users; adopting a tone and style that made Netflix relatable as if were a fellow audience member. These methods all contribute to a sense that Netflix is a friend first, a corporation second. The positioning of brands as friends requires further investigation of the way it might make it less likely or comfortable for fans and critics to challenge corporate narratives of inclusivity.

163 Conclusion Deconstructing Netflix’s Personalization Rhetoric and Clearing the Ground for Future Work

Discourses that set Netflix apart from other television services and, in particular, frame the service as new and disruptive when it comes to audience targeting, were prevalent in the late 2010s. In 2018, Vulture journalist Josef Adalian argued that Netflix was “one of

Hollywood’s great unsolved mysteries.” Legacy networks, he maintained, “use their programming to define carefully crafted identities” affiliated with a precisely defined audience constituency, but Netflix does not (Adalian 2018a). As this thesis illustrated,

Netflix executives repeatedly have denied that the service targeted any single audience demographic or taste sensibility more than others.

Over the course of the 2010s, Netflix increasingly expanded the level of customization offered to users on the service through methods including modifying the header banner, tailoring the recommendation carousels, adjusting the order of shows featured, and varying an individual show’s cover image and text. In doing so, Netflix executives have promoted the idea via trade publications and popular discourse that

“personalization algorithms help us promote the right content to the right viewers”

(Netflix 2016b). In a 2018 call with investors, for instance, Sarandos claimed that “there was a time when we didn’t market any of our content” (Thomson Reuters Street Events

2018c) because personalized recommendations on the service would “unlock more viewers than anyone” (Yellin quoted Adalian 2018b).

164 Yet, despite such dominant discourses circulated by Netflix and taken up by most journalists, strategies that hail audience constituencies not just on the level of their viewing histories but as part of a bigger identify formations are evident across Netflix’s marketing practices. Starting this project with the question of where and why Netflix hails audiences in particular ways, this thesis has provided three main contributions.

First, this thesis has placed Netflix within a lineage of teen television. Though

Netflix has been an important producer and distributor of teen media since 2016, the service’s relationship to television networks such as The WB, The CW, and Freeform has not yet been explored by scholars. Without closer scrutiny, the niche branding model of

The WB, The CW, and Freeform appears to be at odds with Netflix’s marketing of a broad library with something for every individual. However, drawing a connection from the mass orientation of broadcast to the niche orientation of cable to Netflix, chapter 1 showed how the streaming service has adhered to the trajectories already established for hailing teens. The teen networks created a brand for teens, but balanced appeals to a more targeted, specific niche with appeals to a broad audience, much like had been the case with a mass audience strategy of the classic network era.

Netflix has likewise sought a broad audience for its teen properties in ways that harken back to earlier eras of linear TV viewing. In intra-industrial communication as well as in press statements and marketing of content such as 13 Reasons, the streaming service especially has emphasized how its teen-oriented properties provide something the whole family can watch together because of the family unit’s reliability as a consumer of streaming services. At the same time, Netflix executives also sought to distinguish their 165 service’s supposedly more daring and authentic young adult material from the more family-friendly fare found on newer streaming services such as Disney+. With 13

Reasons, Netflix used graphic and explicit depictions of teen life as a selling point for audiences, though backlash to 13 Reasons forced the service to formulate these depictions as beneficial to families, drawing the property more into a family-friendly discourse over time. Thus, in contrast to previous studies that have tended to emphasize differences between old and new TV, I have outlined continuities between historical linear and emergent streaming models when it comes to audience attraction and retention.

Further, I interrogated dominant claims about the radical nature of Netflix-as- disruptive force in terms of audience construction and targeting by considering how the streaming service constructed and hailed the audiences of its teen-oriented properties on social media. This is the project’s second main contribution. In spite of Netflix’s rhetoric that it only recommends material based on viewing history, eschewing indicators like age and nationality, Netflix’s social media profiles specifically aligned with an age, race, or interest—and therefore obviously were geared toward a particular section of audiences.

Even Netflix’s more general accounts, such as @netflix, implied a certain type of assumed audience, especially following the 2018 addition of various social media entities like @netflixfilm, @strongblacklead, and @netflixfamily. In 2017, during the 13

Reasons promotion, the general @netflix Twitter account maintained a broad focus, using strategies that would draw in mature thriller fans, teens, parents, and others. In 2018, however, a more serious and critical engagement with media was offloaded to the

@netflixfilm account. With recurrent celebrations of female creatives, such as Lana 166 Condor and To All the Boys director Susan Johnson, and frequent reference to romantic comedies, the evolving @netflix account increasingly skewed toward hailing female viewers. Further exploration of the account’s tone would contribute to a better understanding of what Netflix’s dominant social media account constructs as a “general” subscriber on Twitter and why. Meanwhile, if the general audience member that @netflix targeted on Twitter increasingly seemed to be female, then the presumed audience on

Instagram’s @netflix was imagined as young and female. Like The CW and Freeform,

@netflix on Instagram used popular teen media, fashion, stars, and a friendly tone to hail teens.

This thesis’s final contribution is to expand on studies examining the relationship between the filmed entertainment industry and audiences as constituted through social media. Gillan (2014) and Johnson and Grainge (2015) both argue that in the 2010s, the filmed entertainment industries have turned to social media for content promotion.

Creating shareable media based on their shows, the television industry hails audiences to facilitate both the spread and sustained popularity of their brand. However, as Johnson and Grainge (2015) note, social media promotion is “contested ground”: the filmed entertainment industry strikes a balance between encouraging and mimicking audience activity in a way that will be perceived as authentic and palatable to audiences, and attempting to control the narratives and interactions surrounding their properties.

Previously, The CW and Freeform responded to social media activity around their properties in such a way as to encourage buying the products sponsoring the networks.

As a result, the two networks created narrow, aspirational models of young women’s 167 femininity, the “CW Woman” and the “Freeform girl.” Similarly, the @netflix Instagram account evolved, ultimately constructing a persona that is boy crazy, aspires to be like

Netflix’s female stars, and who empowers herself through working on her body or wardrobe.

Positioning itself as an ally and friend of different audience constituencies, Netflix has boosted engagement around its brand and shaped discourses around its media properties while appearing to support and celebrate its users. Though some diversity in experience of feminine identity is visible on Netflix social media accounts, much like The

CW and Freeform, the streaming service established a liberal, socially aware tone that nevertheless centered the experiences of white, young, heterosexual women. Further research of Netflix accounts like Strong Black Lead and The Most is necessary to provide more insight into how race and sexuality respectively function outside of the general

Netflix accounts. While diversity has been sold to audiences throughout television’s history, Netflix’s efforts to build a sincere-seeming connection with audiences online, on the basis of inclusivity, must continue to be interrogated for the ways it does and does not reconfigure the connections between filmed entertainment, audiences, and social activism.

168

Figure 5.1: Netflix’s social media use as audience management. (Netflix US 2018)

As illustrated in earlier chapters, many communication strategies are common across Netflix social media accounts. One important tactic that stands out to me as requiring further attention was treating actors as friends. For instance, @netflix referred to young women like Shannon Purser (Sierra Burgess is a Loser, Stranger Things) and

Kiernan Shipka (Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, Let It Snow, The Silence) as friends who they are excited for or will see soon. Purser and Shipka are two actresses who have been cast in multiple Netflix projects, and Netflix has cast many other young adult actors from teen-oriented properties in further productions, including Noah Centineo, Katherine

Langford, Millie Bobby Brown, KJ Apa, and Ross Butler. It is interesting to consider how a de facto Netflix brand might emerge from this set of frequent collaborators most readily recognized for their Netflix-affiliated work. This thesis has only scratched the surface of Netflix’s social strategies and there is room for much further exploration.

169 Furthermore, there are still other potential directions for future inquiry. When it comes to Netflix’s promotion of teen-oriented properties, research could consider how

Netflix’s global production and distribution platform figure in. Netflix has emphasized international expansion, producing many popular teen-oriented shows outside the U.S., including Spain’s Elite (2018–), Sweden’s The Rain (2018–2020), and South Africa’s

Blood and Water (2020–). More research is necessary to see how nationality factors into

Netflix’s audience construction and social media promotion.

Furthermore, considering the labor behind social media promotion introduces yet another set of questions, especially since this labor is disproportionally falling on young women. On a more micro-level, the people behind the Netflix social media accounts contribute their own world views and preferences to the posts they write, which might not always align with Netflix’s larger goals. Social media is entry level work that is more accessible to those wishing to work in the media industries than are production-oriented jobs. Furthermore, typically understood as marketing rather than creative contribution, social media work does not hold the same amount of prestige as other media jobs. In the male-dominated tech and streaming industry, it is possible that social media work has opened a window for the subtle and small cultural contribution of young women, perhaps even playing a key role in the female-oriented nature of many Netflix social media accounts. However, the perspective of social media workers also comes with limitations.

As Brooke Erin Duffy notes, the development of social media aesthetics has propped up

“a look that is upper-middle-class white girl” (2017, 180). Thus, future work on Netflix’s social media promotion could include interviewing the service’s lower-level personnel 170 working on social media and how they see themselves as fostering viewpoints on teen media that might fall outside of Netflix’s established voice.

As indicated by the many examples I have provided of directions one might take moving forward, the topic of Netflix’s social media promotion is only beginning to be explored. Pointing to the contradictions in Netflix’s executive discourses and recognizing that claims of newness by services like Netflix do not actually mean they are always doing something entirely new, this thesis clears the way for richer discussion of how the service targets audiences. Especially through distinguishing between Netflix the platform itself, production decisions made by Netflix, and the company’s marketing strategies, I illustrated how, much as they did for cable channels, demographics continue to play an important role in the operations of streaming services, no matter how individualized.

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179 ———. 2018c. Noah Centineo Flirts with Lana Condor, Charm Battle. YouTube. @NewOnNetflix. https://youtu.be/vWfr0NxL9Yk. ———. 2018d. The Cast of To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before Plays Kiss & Tell. YouTube. @NewOnNetflix. https://youtu.be/srV0Kg1C2bY. ———. 2018e. “Letter to Shareholders.” Third Quarter 2018 Earnings Report. https://s22.q4cdn.com/959853165/files/doc_financials/quarterly_reports/2018/q3/FI NAL-Q3-18-Shareholder-Letter.pdf. ———. 2019a. “Letter to Shareholders.” Fourth Quarter 2019 Earnings Report. https://s22.q4cdn.com/959853165/files/doc_financials/quarterly_reports/2018/q4/01/ FINAL-Q4-18-Shareholder-Letter.pdf. ———. 2019b. “Letter to Shareholders.” Second Quarter 2019 Earnings Report. https://s22.q4cdn.com/959853165/files/doc_financials/quarterly_reports/2019/q2/Q2 -19-Shareholder-Letter-FINAL.pdf. Netflix Family. 2020. “This Month It’s All about Those Three Little Words: New. On. Netflix.” Tweet. @netflixfamily (blog). February 1, 2020. https://twitter.com/netflixfamily/status/1223675631386284032. Netflix Film. 2018a. “Will Fall Hard for Any Teen Romance That Includes...Love, Pact, LOVE GETTING IN THE WAY OF THE PACT, Old-Timey Diner, Boy with Just- Floppy-Enough Hair, (Bonus) Based on New York Times Bestseller.” Tweet. @netflixfilm (blog). June 21, 2018. https://twitter.com/NetflixFilm/status/1009812818307223554. ———. 2018b. “NetflixFilm on Twitter: ‘@Ga39533960Jesse Honestly, Same. And Honestly, There’s No Better Way to Prepare for #ToAllTheBoysIveLovedBefore than by Honoring Another Iconic Rom-Com about a Hilarious Writer — Bridget Jones’s Baby!’ / Twitter.” Tweet. @netflixfilm (blog). June 22, 2018. https://twitter.com/NetflixFilm/status/1010250363503460354. ———. 2018c. “@RalphBilaw @SoniaKhiara Y’all Should Just Watch One of These Together. Set It Up Is Is Pure Bliss. For Something More Indie Try Tramps. And for a Classic Go with How To Lose A Guy In 10 Days.” Tweet. @netflixfilm (blog). June 22, 2018. https://twitter.com/NetflixFilm/status/1010248160256487424. ———. 2018d. “Gather Round Town Folk of Twitter! I Have a Declaration to Make: Rom-Coms Are Back. To Prove It, Here Are Some of the Best Rom-Coms on the Service Right Now. You Can Thank Me/Blame Me When You Start Happy Crying.” Tweet. @netflixfilm (blog). June 27, 2018. https://twitter.com/netflixfilm/status/1012109974225317888. ———. 2018e. “@hlschorr @netflix Trashy?! Who You Calling Trashy?? Try Bachelorette, It’s Not Trashy but It’s REALLY Good.” Tweet. @NetflixFilm (blog). June 29, 2018. https://twitter.com/netflixfilm/status/1012845661421617152. ———. 2018f. “For Those of You Just Waking up to Sandra Oh, Where Were You When the Queen of Genovia Came to Grove High School? (And Yes, the Queen Is Here. Princess Diaries Is Now on Netflix).” Tweet. @netflix (blog). July 5, 2018. https://twitter.com/netflixfilm/status/1014997283564183552.

180 ———. 2018g. “Set It Up (2018)—Yes, It’s a Rom-Com, but These Characters Are Super Ambitious with Their Careers! Lucy Liu Plays the Owner of a Successful Sports Website, and Her Assistant, Harper (Zoey Deutch), Works Tirelessly in Order to Someday Do the Same. Will You Put in the Work?” Tweet. @netflixfilm (blog). July 16, 2018. https://twitter.com/netflixfilm/status/1018935982203158528. ———. 2018h. “Now Presenting 7 Essential Filmmaking Tips, Inspired by Mark Duplass Films (According to Articles and Blogs I’ve Read about Him, so I Think This Is All Sacred Advice, but It Might Just Be Words on the Internet) Required Viewing—Blue Jay (2016).” Tweet. @netflixfilm (blog). July 18, 2018. https://twitter.com/netflixfilm/status/1019679454199574528. ———. 2018i. “Rom-Com Royalty Sanaa Lathan Is Back This September with the Story of a Woman Who Learns That Sometimes the Only Way to Stand up for What You Believe in Is by Getting Knocked down in the First Place.” Tweet. @netflixfilm (blog). July 20, 2018. https://twitter.com/netflixfilm/status/1020382839680925699. ———. 2018j. “Daughters of the Dust Is One of the Most Influential Independent Films in History. And like @ava Says, It’s Time for Everyone to Know Julie Dash’s Name.” Tweet. @netflixfilm (blog). July 25, 2018. https://twitter.com/netflixfilm/status/1022263713145872384. ———. 2018k. “Hi @zoeydeutch @glenpowell, Just Letting You Know Set It Up Just Received the Highest Critical Acclaim Possible.” Tweet. @netflixfilm (blog). July 31, 2018. https://twitter.com/netflixfilm/status/1024327622329683968. ———. 2018l. “@anakinjmt The Supremely Underrated Laggies Was Written and Directed by Two Very Smart and Funny Women (Andrea Seigel and Lynn Shelton) and I Think It’s Perfect for Any Gilmore Girls Fan.” Tweet. @netflixfilm (blog). August 3, 2018. https://twitter.com/netflixfilm/status/1025489786709000192. ———. 2018m. “Claire Scanlon – Director of Set It Up, a Rom-Com That Subverts the Trope That Women Can’t Be Career Oriented AND Find Love. The Film Was Written by a Woman (Katie Silberman), Starring Badass Women (Lucy Liu & Zoey Deutch), and Directed by a Badass Woman.” Tweet. @netflixfilm (blog). August 11, 2018. https://twitter.com/NetflixFilm/status/1028344104428552192. ———. 2018n. “According to @nytimes, the Last Hollywood Production with an Asian Led Cast Was The Joy Luck Club in 1993. That Was 25 Years Ago. And of the 100 Top 2017 Films, 2/3 Didn’t Have a Single Asian Woman. So Yes — We Need More Films like Crazy Rich Asians. We Needed Them Yesterday.” Tweet. @netflixfilm (blog). August 15, 2018. https://twitter.com/netflixfilm/status/1029861912207548416. ———. 2018o. “@uwstweets Who’s to Say I’m Not Right There with Ya? And after That – Check out To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before for an A+ Double Feature.” Tweet. @netflixfilm (blog). August 17, 2018. https://twitter.com/netflixfilm/status/1030550896692719617. ———. 2018p. “*Ahem* I’m about to Watch #ToAllTheBoysIveLovedBefore — Granted for the Third Time — but I Need You All to Go on This Emotional Journey

181 with Me.” Tweet. @netflixfilm (blog). August 18, 2018. https://twitter.com/netflixfilm/status/1030880769663619072. ———. 2018q. “Seeing Yourself Onscreen Can Be a Powerful Thing. ⬆ Check out My IG Story to Hear @lanacondor and @janelparrish Discuss Casting And….” Instagram. @netflixfilm (blog). August 19, 2018. https://www.instagram.com/p/BmrGO7In3fg/. ———. 2018r. “If You’ve Seen #ToAllTheBoysIveLovedBefore, Chances Are You Fell for the World @jennyhan Created – and Chances Are You Fell Hard. So, We Chatted with Jenny about What It Meant Seeing Her Novel Come to Fruition on Screen (Thread).” Tweet. @netflixfilm (blog). August 24, 2018. https://twitter.com/netflixfilm/status/1033140107073572864. ———. 2018s. “EXCUSE ME… Can We Talk about the Film Teeth? When Teeth First Premiered 10 Years Ago, It Was as a Limited Release. However, the Cult-Favorite Has since Spread by Word-of-Mouth (No Pun Intended) and May Be as Culturally Relevant Now as It Was Then.” Tweet. @netflixfilm (blog). August 26, 2018. https://twitter.com/netflixfilm/status/1033806399673839616. ———. 2018t. “Before Lara Jean’s Bedroom Became the Source of Everyone’s Envy, It Was Just a Blank Canvas for the Film’s Design Team. The Mural Behind….” @netflixfilm (blog). August 28, 2018. https://www.instagram.com/p/BnCI01jnuoR/. ———. 2018u. “@netflix @Spotify ‘Lovers’ by Anna Of The North Is the Song in the Background of the Hot Tub Scene. You’re Welcome.” Tweet. @netflixfilm (blog). August 28, 2018. https://twitter.com/netflixfilm/status/1034573279036465153. ———. 2018v. “@likeyoudox Woah Woah Woah... I Can’t Imagine Which Film You’re Possibly Thinking Of???” Tweet. @netflixfilm (blog). August 31, 2018. https://twitter.com/netflixfilm/status/1035622773970882563. ———. 2018w. “Quick Cinematography PSA You Never Asked for — a Camera Angle Isn’t Randomly Chosen Because ‘It Looks Cool’! The Best Filmmakers Establish Angles That Provide Us Real Insight into a Character’s State of Being. (THREAD).” @netflixfilm (blog). September 17, 2018. https://twitter.com/netflixfilm/status/1041820411418206208. ———. 2018x. “@micaylabrewster I’m Right There with You. I’m Probably on My 8th or 9th Watch of TATBILB. BUT, the Film The First Time Just Might Help Fill That Void in Your Heart.” Tweet. @netflixfilm (blog). September 21, 2018. https://twitter.com/NetflixFilm/status/1043263643796656128. ———. 2018y. “Now That Rom-Coms Are Officially BACK, I Have One Question: What Took You All so Long?! No Offense to the Other Genres, but Only One Can Reign Supreme. Allow Me to Explain Why Rom-Coms > Everything Else:” Tweet. @netflixfilm (blog). September 26, 2018. https://twitter.com/netflixfilm/status/1045044770551214081. Netflix PR. 2017. “Melissa Cobb to Lead Netflix Kids & Family Content Team.” Netflix Media Center. September 14, 2017. https://media.netflix.com/en/press- releases/melissa-cobb-to-lead-netflix-kids-family-content-team.

182 ———. 2019. “Netflix Orders Mindy Kaling Coming-of-Age Comedy Series.” Netflix Media Center. March 20, 2019. https://media.netflix.com/en/press-releases/netflix- orders-mindy-kaling-coming-of-age-comedy-series. Netflix US. 2017a. “She Has Nothing Left to Lose... but They Do. #13ReasonsWhy Comes to Netflix 3/31. Https://T.Co/YPwHUaF7NU.” Tweet. @netflix (blog). January 25, 2017. https://twitter.com/netflix/status/824308904175636480. ———. 2017b. “Brad Pitt Is Going to Liberate the Shit out of You. War Machine, a Netflix Original Film, Premieres Only on Netflix May 26.” Tweet. @netflix (blog). March 1, 2017. https://twitter.com/netflix/status/836938219836977156. ———. 2017c. “MINDHUNTER. A Netflix Original Series. October 2017.” Tweet. @netflix (blog). March 1, 2017. https://twitter.com/netflix/status/837064010532978692. ———. 2017d. “A Profile for Each of Your Doppelgängers. #VampireDiaries.” Tweet. @netflix (blog). March 25, 2017. https://twitter.com/netflix/status/845705025296842752. ———. 2017e. “The Story of Hannah Baker’s Life Isn’t Easy to Tell, but It’s as Real as It Gets. @13ReasonsWhy Is Now Streaming.” Tweet. @netflix (blog). March 31, 2017. https://twitter.com/netflix/status/847960000207003648. ———. 2017f. “She’s Got Nothing Left to Lose... but They Do. #13ReasonsWhy.” Tweet. @netflix (blog). April 3, 2017. https://twitter.com/netflix/status/849060561018957824. ———. 2017g. “‘You Are Amazing. You May Not Always Realize It, but This Right Here Is Proof.’ #ReasonsWhyYouMatter.” Tweet. @netflix (blog). April 7, 2017. https://twitter.com/netflix/status/850379778792202240. ———. 2017h. “‘We’re All Figuring It out Together.’ The Stars of @13ReasonsWhy Share 13 Tips for Getting through School.” Tweet. @netflix (blog). April 13, 2017. https://twitter.com/netflix/status/852562655646633985. ———. 2017i. “‘If We Have Common Ground We Can Resolve Any Problem That Arises.’” Tweet. @netflix (blog). April 25, 2017. https://twitter.com/netflix/status/856931935850971136. ———. 2017j. “The Cast of @13ReasonsWhy Want to Tell You Something.” Tweet. @netflix (blog). May 17, 2017. https://twitter.com/netflix/status/864891390232113152. ———. 2017k. “We Would Do No Such Thing. Https://T.Co/KnQ8aZHhAB.” Tweet. @netflix (blog). May 20, 2017. https://twitter.com/netflix/status/866087861283508224. ———. 2017l. “We Know What You’ve Been Doing Instead of Studying All Semester... so Here Are the Tips You Need to Survive Finals Week. *results May Vary Https://T.Co/Ce7QiOFGyS".” Tweet. @netflix (blog). May 23, 2017. https://twitter.com/netflix/status/867153832194719744. ———. 2018a. “Get Ready for the next Truly Great Romantic Comedy. ‘To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before.’ Starring Lana Condor. Written by Sofia Alvarez. Directed

183 by Susan Johnson. August 17.” Tweet. @netflix (blog). June 21, 2018. https://twitter.com/netflix/status/1009860289251049472. ———. 2018b. “@leifeday Cut Me Some Slack i’m Just a #brand Trying to Promote #content to a Desired Audience.” Tweet. @netflix (blog). July 17, 2018. https://twitter.com/netflix/status/1019336264619708416. ———. 2018c. “@RWitherspoon so Glad You Liked @SetItUpNetflix! Didn’t It Make You Want Pizza Real Bad???” Tweet. @netflix (blog). July 30, 2018. https://twitter.com/netflix/status/1024076018636603393. ———. 2018d. “Julia’s in Her Feelings.” Tweet. @netflix (blog). July 31, 2018. https://twitter.com/netflix/status/1024415432734728192. ———. 2018e. “Like I Told You...” Tweet. @netflix (blog). August 3, 2018. https://twitter.com/netflix/status/1025449431246594048. ———. 2018f. “It’s Time We Started Showing More Respect to Ella Enchanted!” Tweet. @netflix (blog). August 6, 2018. https://twitter.com/netflix/status/1026558631527964678. ———. 2018g. “When You Hear Someone Say ‘They Don’t Make Great Romantic Comedies Anymore.’” Tweet. @netflix (blog). August 6, 2018. https://twitter.com/netflix/status/1037453860275515392. ———. 2018h. “@elena_yip @jennyhan @simonteen @monicakwatson @goodreads So Glad You Loved the Movie as Much as We Do!” Tweet. @netflix (blog). August 15, 2018. https://twitter.com/netflix/status/1029929132199571457. ———. 2018i. “Netflix on Twitter: ‘@TigerBeatNow @noahcent Saaaaaaame’ / Twitter.” Tweet. @netflix (blog). August 15, 2018. https://twitter.com/netflix/status/1029927618479439872. ———. 2018j. “Everyone Deserves a Friend like Lilly Moscovitz.” Tweet. @netflix (blog). August 16, 2018. https://twitter.com/netflix/status/1030213096839688192. ———. 2018k. “@earthtoalana She Is My Queen and I Would Lay down My Life for Her.” Tweet. @netflix (blog). August 19, 2018. https://twitter.com/netflix/status/1031379777649704961. ———. 2018l. .“.@lanacondor Hopes ‘To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before’ Reminds Asian-American Girls That ‘They Can Absolutely Star in Their Own Rom-Com!’” Tweet. @netflix (blog). August 20, 2018. https://twitter.com/netflix/status/1031594355784441856. ———. 2018m. “@AllieReneTaylor <3.” Tweet. @netflix (blog). August 21, 2018. https://twitter.com/netflix/status/1031977347937853440. ———. 2018n. “@lanacondor.” Tweet. @netflix (blog). August 22, 2018. https://twitter.com/netflix/status/1032327909589970944. ———. 2018o. “@titfart.” Tweet. @netflix (blog). August 26, 2018. https://twitter.com/netflix/status/1033907255479922688. ———. 2018p. “@ArimasAdam i’m Honored.” Tweet. @netflix (blog). August 27, 2018. https://twitter.com/netflix/status/1034198424055205888.

184 ———. 2018q. “@jaredfrieder @ihatejoelkim @bowenyang CAN RELATE.” Tweet. @netflix (blog). August 27, 2018. https://twitter.com/netflix/status/1034203762829619200. ———. 2018r. “@RossButler @trvisXX @theweeknd.” Tweet. @netflix (blog). August 27, 2018. https://twitter.com/netflix/status/1034212121775468544. ———. 2018s. “For Everyone Who Is Obsessed with Lara Jean’s Bedroom.” Tweet. @netflix (blog). August 29, 2018. https://twitter.com/netflix/status/1034924344797888512. ———. 2018t. “You’ve Worked so Hard Today. You Deserve a Break.” Tweet. @netflix (blog). August 29, 2018. https://twitter.com/netflix/status/1034905905836376064. ———. 2018u. “Say Hello to Your next Obsession: Elite.” Tweet. @netflix (blog). September 10, 2018. https://twitter.com/netflix/status/1039171924503535616. ———. 2018v. “Here’s Every Time Jax Was Shirtless on Sons of Anarchy. You’re Welcome.” Tweet. @netflix (blog). 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