Presenter(s): Mai Amalie Bak − Journalism
Faculty Mentor(s): Heather Shoenberger
Oral Session 2C
Research Area: Media Studies
This study aims to understand how American undergraduate university students make decisions about the entertainment media they stream, including the motivations in choosing a particular streaming service and their attitudes and actual engagement with piracy. In recent years, the entertainment media industry has been evolving more quickly than ever before, and a significant factor in this change is the ever-accelerating transition to online streaming services. These services, including Netflix, Hulu, and Spotify, offer films, television shows and music which can be streamed and downloaded through the Internet on most digital devices. Increasing methods of piracy and peer to peer password sharing has made it more difficult to regulate how entertainment media is distributed, and determine whether consumers use legal methods to obtain the media they consume. This project will use semi-structured individual interviews of 30 undergraduates at the University of Oregon with the goal to be to illuminate their understanding of/participation in piracy, and media streaming motivations and habits. The results of this study seek to offer empirical evidence of college student awareness of piracy policies, use of online streaming and offer suggestions for content providers looking to avoid piracy in the changing entertainment media landscape.