Disrupting the Algorithm: The Streaming Platforms in the Cuban Audiovisual Landscape: El paquete semanal, Netflix, and Mi Mochila

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2021

Abstract

Since 2013 the Cuban audiovisual distribution platform el paquete semanal has challenged decades of state-centered media and has changed how most Cubans interact with the internet, film, and television. While scorned by the Cuban government for distributing "frivolity," el paquete has garnered far-reaching national popularity. To challenge the paquete's impressive success, in 2014, the Cuban government launched a largely unpopular competing offline audiovisual platform known as Mi Mochila. Since 2015 the US-based platform Netflix has also tried unsuccessfully to break into the Cuban market. In this article I analyze the Cuban platform landscape. In particular, I look at the popular paquete in dialogue with both Netflix and the Cuban government's Mi Mochila to explore their workings as well as their crucial divergences to offer a view of the current way Cubans interact with audiovisual content. I contend that despite comparisons between el paquete and Netflix, it is the Cuban state's Mi Mochila that has more in common with the Netflix model in terms of user regulations and monitoring. I show that the paquete's success in the Cuban audiovisual landscape is due to its lack of a cloud-based-algorithm as well as its disruption of the state's media control.

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Publication Title

Cuban Studies

Published Citation

Farrell, Michelle Leigh. "Disrupting the Algorithm: The Streaming Platforms in the Cuban Audiovisual Landscape: El paquete semanal, Netflix, and Mi Mochila." Cuban Studies 50 (2021): 186-204. doi:10.1353/cub.2021.0012.

DOI

10.1353/cub.2021.0012

Peer Reviewed

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