Exploring How Chinese TV Dramas Reach Global Audiences via Viki in the Transnational Flow of TV Content

Abstract Since 2014, more and more Chinese dramas have been streamed on international platforms such as YouTube, Netflix, Amazon Prime, and Hulu, as well as on regional ones such as Viu, Naver, etc. Among those sites, Viki, with its special affordance features, has become a major platform for Chinese TV dramas to reach a global audience. The presence of Chinese TV dramas on Viki is a successful case of contra-flow of media products propelled by political, economic, technological and cultural factors. Based on the political economy and platform affordance theory, this paper explores why and how Chinese TV dramas offer new ways of presenting audiovisual content. It starts by laying out the political-economic context of the globalization of Chinese TV dramas and then focuses on how Viki has become a streaming hub. It examines the motivations of TV drama producers and distributors in the distribution of Viki and investigates the role of Viki from its specific platform affordances. The principal data sources of this study are market reports, news, and online observation. They show the internationalization process of Chinese TV dramas on Viki. The findings of this study share insights into how Chinese TV dramas as a kind of cultural product become internationalized in the platformization age of video-streaming and what the contra-flow of entertainment content implicates.