Digital Streaming Platforms and Cultural Content Consumption: A Comparative Qualitative Study of Saudi and French SVOD Users

Abstract

This study presents a qualitative comparison of how participants in Saudi Arabia and France describe their consumption of cultural content on digital streaming platforms and the role they attribute to platform affordances, algorithmic recommendation systems, language preferences and national cultural-policy contexts. Situated within an interpretive paradigm, the study employs a comparative multiple-case design based on 30 semi-structured interviews and eight solicited streaming diaries collected between March and August 2023. The analysis integrates uses and gratifications theory, cultural proximity theory, and scholarship on media globalisation and cultural hybridity. These perspectives are brought together in an analytical model examining the relationships among platform affordances, algorithmic curation, audience agency, language and cultural proximity, local–foreign content mixes, and cultural-identity negotiation.

The findings indicate that participants in both national groups described a substantial movement toward on-demand viewing, although the nature of this shift differed between the two samples. Participants in the Saudi sample more frequently described mobile-first and binge-oriented viewing practices, pragmatic switching between Arabic and English, and generally positive accounts of algorithmic curation. Participants in the French sample described a more hybrid media diet, retaining attachments to broadcast television and cinema while expressing greater ambivalence about algorithmic recommendation and a more politicised engagement with local and foreign content. The study develops a preliminary qualitative account of platform-mediated cultural proximity, arguing that cultural proximity in algorithmically curated environments depends not only on audience preferences but also on the visibility and accessibility that platforms provide. The study discusses implications for culturally responsive recommendation systems, the discoverability of local content, and comparative audience research in the platform era.