Letterboxd Van Dijck Analysis - Sim Rivers, Gisa Gahima, Heejin Hong

Van Dijck Social Media Analysis

Jose Van Dijck provides us with two very distinct frameworks for analyzing the construction and operation of social media networks. We sought to apply this framework to the social media site known as Letterboxd. Letterboxd is “a social network for sharing your taste in film” (“Frequent questions”). It is a social media site distinct in its sole focus on film and film discussion, and has been jokingly described as “the best new way for cinéphiles to get into online arguments with their friends” (Lucca). 

However, despite its narrow lens, the site can be seen to still function in a similar manner to other social media sites, such as Facebook and Twitter, and to indeed work in tandem with them. In order to see the way in which this site operates, we must break down our analysis into the frameworks and categories that Van Dijck himself does. Firstly, we will deal with Actor-Network Theory, which is separated into the categories of Technology, Users/Usages, and Content.

In his analysis of the technology aspect of Actor-Network Theory, Van Dijck divides technology into several smaller categories. These categories include Metadata, Algorithm, Protocol, Interface, and Default. Letterboxd utilizes two distinct categories of metadata. User metadata, such as who posted, when, from what browser or app, what rating was given, and what lists it was included on, is embedded and used as a method of cataloguing and sorting the data. Some of this data is easily observable, manifest in the visually sorted lists, as well as the timestamps and usernames that are linked to each post. However, other parts of this metadata, such as the location of posting or the browser or app used for access, are not so easily visible. This metadata is sourced internally, for the functions of the site itself (“Privacy policy”). Beyond user metadata, Letterboxd utilizes and relies heavily on film metadata imported from The Movie Database, also known as TMDb. Film metadata includes the title of the film, the production company, the cast list, production staff, genre, release date, and much more (“Film Data”). This data is all publicly visible, and can be used as a sorting mechanism by site users.

In terms of algorithm, the social, public sharing aspect of the website is what the systems seem to emphasize. Letterboxd utilizes connection to other social media sites, specifically Twitter and Facebook, to output information on who of your contacts on these other social media sites uses Letterboxd, and, with Facebook, to prompt you to display your Letterboxd activities with the optional ‘Activity Sharing’ feature, which allows you to share reviews, ratings, and lists on your Facebook profile on a case-by-case basis, should you turn the option on (“Frequent questions”). The algorithms are read-only, meaning on Twitter, they can only pull public information for use on your Letterboxd account, but they cannot push any information out from your Twitter account.

 They also analyze your lists, films logged, and who you follow in order to recommend individual films, larger public lists, and even users who they think you should follow. (“Frequent questions”)

Letterboxd’s protocol seems to center highly around community interactivity. In order to participate in Letterboxd, users must be interactive, within the bounds of “appropriate conduct” (“Community policy”). The difference between Letterboxd and other film sites is the social aspect, which is heavily emphasized by its creators. Moving beyond the practical, professional functions of other film sites, Letterboxd follows “the tried-and-true Internet formula of taking something you might do anyway (keep a movie log) and making the resulting data easily quantifiable, sortable, and ‘social,’" (Lucca). If you have been inactive for some time, Letterboxd will send reminder emails to log recent films and “see what your friends have been up to.” The users must focus exclusively on film, with restrictions on television, “video” content, and any adult-themed content (“Frequent questions’). The interactions on the site are regulated by a Community policy, published in abbreviated user-friendly format as well as a longer, official Legal Policy version. The Community policy governs the use of aggressive or inappropriate interactions, harassment and bullying, as well as film spoilers. The simplified message that they include to summarize the policy reads “Basically, be cool.” (“Community policy”) Repercussions for violation of the policy can include removal of content as well as account suspension or termination (“Community policy”).

Interface on the site can be divided into categories of visible and invisible systems. Visible systems primarily include the friend system and the lists system. The friend system allows you to pick who you follow on the site, although it is more similar to Twitter’s Following system than Facebook’s friend system, as it does not require mutual confirmation or following. You see an abbreviated summary of your friends’ recent activity at the top of your homepage, with the option to view all activity. 

The next row down is a “Popular Films” list of the most-interacted-with films of the week, which can expand to a comprehensive list of films on the site, auto-sorted by “popularity this week” with narrowing-down options including decade released, genre, and platforms the films are available on, and with sorting options including name, rating, chronological release date, length, popularity site-wide, and popularity among your friends. The third interface on your homepage lists popular reviews posted this week, aggregated by views and interactions. Invisible interfaces include the code that adapts the visual interfaces to your desktop browser, your mobile browser, and the app version of Letterboxd. The system that connects Letterboxd to TMDb is not publicly available, but shortcuts have been created to immediately import new TMDb data into Letterboxd without having to wait 6 hours (“Film data”). Buying the Pro version gives you access to import data from other websites and file types to Letterboxd (“Importing data”). As they do utilize TMDb’s API, any edits or corrections to film data must be made on TMDb’s website with a separate account (“Film data”). However they are currently working on a publicly available API for their own site (“Frequent questions”).

You can tell much about the goals of a social media site from the Defaults. The Defaults are “settings automatically assigned to a software application to channel user behavior in a certain way,” (Van Dijck, “Chapter 2”). The Defaults on Letterboxd seem to indicate a commitment to their stated intention of facilitating conversation about and appreciation for film in a social setting. The default settings on Letterboxd allow your account to generally be a blank slate. They do not require connection to outside social media accounts or any personal information other than your email address. However, all of your profile information is defaulted to public, and your home page is autopopulated with the most popular films and reviews of the week. Lists are always automatically set to public sharing, unless you change the setting, and commenting is set to public and unrestricted. This is in keeping with their focus on the social interaction aspect of film-cataloguing, as well as their statements within their privacy policy regarding the use of personal information and sharing of data.

Having finally exhausted the Technology aspects of Letterboxd, we can move on to the second focus of Actor-Network Theory: User/Usage. The users of Letterboxd are movie lovers looking to share their opinions and affection for film with fellow movie connoisseurs.  With Letterboxd, users are able to rate, write reviews, and keep track of the movies they have watched. The network works similarly to Twitter, allowing users to follow one another and view what movies they have watched and reviewed. Activity appears in a timeline fashion and users can interact and discuss with followers about any particular film by simply commenting on a post on their timeline. A feature known as the “People” page, gives users suggestions on who they should follow, in addition to being able to find people to follow through their Twitter and Facebook accounts. Letterboxd consists of 3 subscription tiers that users may choose from: free, Pro, which costs $19 per year, and Patron, which costs $49 per year (“Pro”) with scaling benefits as the subscription tiers increase. 

This tiered system further clarifies the focus of the site as being an inclusive community intended for very serious film afficionados. The features that scale with the tiers do not give social advantage to subscribers over free users, but rather provide increased personal benefits to very dedicated, invested fans who wish to contribute to the site’s growth.

The final aspect of the Actor-Network Theory is Content. For the most part, the content on Letterboxd is user-generated. The only content not created by Letterboxd users is the film metadata — the names of actors, directors and studios, movie summaries, release dates, trailers and film artwork — which are all imported from TMDb (“Film data”). However, even this data is crowdsourced, and Letterboxd provides tools and tips for editing and adding to the data, in order to create more comprehensive, accurate content for the whole site. The content of the site is the result of user interaction, and can be described as “productive cinephilia” (Hamrah, “Book Review: The New Cinephilia”). Users create the lists, log the films, write the reviews, comment on the posts; Since the primary focus of Letterboxd is allowing users to share their opinions on movies, their reviews and comments make up the majority of the content on the site. Content is organized around user interaction, their reviews and discussions, and what they share with one another.

 This productive interaction based around a single focus is entirely in keeping with the site’s stated intention, as they see no need to supplement the user interaction with tangentially related material or outside content. We can truly begin to see Letterboxd as a social media site by cinephiles, for cinephiles.

Van Dijck’s analysis is not constrained to simple Actor-Network Theory, however. We must also investigate what forces drive and propel this network, aside from human agency and technology. This brings us to Van Dijck’s second framework: Political Economy. Political Economy views social networks as “manifestations of power relationships between institutional producers and individual consumers,” (Van Dijck). As such, we must analyze the power structures at play in our social network of Letterboxd, defined into categories of Ownership, Governance, and Business Models.

Letterboxd is owned and maintained by a small team of 10 in Auckland, New Zealand. The site was co-founded and launched by Matthew Buchanan and Karl von Randow in 2011 (“Crew”). The founders focused the service on the social aspects of film appreciation, integrating film tracking with sharing opinions and fostering discussion about, and love of, film (“Crew”). 

The fact that this website is independently owned and operated by such a small staff informs us about not only its size and online presence, but about the intention of the founders. The operation is small-scale enough that it has not gone public with ownership, and it can still be maintained and improved by a relatively small team of developers.

This small team of developers also factor into the governance of the site.  Since the team is so small, much of the governance is regulated through a reporting system, with online interactions regulated when necessary by the Community manager, Gemma Gracewood, (“Crew”). The usage of the Letterboxd website is primarily governed by the Community policy. This policy regulates the usage of the website and is separate from the Terms of Use and Privacy policy. The Community policy governs the interactions between members of the site, in terms of topics of discussion, aggressive behavior, harassment, bullying, solicitation of private information, and respect of others’ opinions. It is presented in a digestible and easily readable manner, with the simple epigram of “Be cool” (“Community policy”) used to summarize the policy. Included in the policy is the right of the developers to remove or restrict posts that are deemed to be inappropriate or in violation of the policy. The policy and systems in place encourage users to flag or report inappropriate content for information storage and, if enough flags are logged, for review by the community manager, repercussions extending as far as account suspension or termination, (“Community policy”). This user-accountability system extends to the promoted and “top” reviews, lists, and films, as these features are auto-aggregated by the website’s system based on user interactions, comments, and ratings. This semi-self governance is both made possible by and intended to encourage positive community interactions based on a singular common focus: a love of watching, tracking, reviewing and discussing film. This regulatory system is also indicative of the type of community that inhabits this digital space, furthering the idea of an independent system by and for film lovers.

In terms of Business models, Letterboxd has slowly rolled out many updates and different versions with various different membership systems (Sawers, “Letterboxd, the social network for movie buffs,”). It began as an invitation-only closed beta, eventually moving to allowing current users to issue others invites to join the site, while keeping the system private private. After a number of users increased, the site went open to the public and introduced a 3 tiered offering to monetize the service; Free, Pro and Patron. Pro and Patron are paid memberships at a rate of $19 per year and $49 per year, respectively. (Sawers) Enhanced features can include year-end and all-time personal stats and data for Pro members, and early access to all new features for Patron members, as well as having your name listed as a Patron on the site (Sawers). Additionally, both Pro and Patron members can import film data from IMDb, Delicious Library and Netflix, or a CSV file and a personalized year-in-review to Letterboxd account. (“Pro”). However, these are only additive features, as the primary functions are still open to the public at the Free level. Users review, rate, and log films utilizing a tag system. They can share and publish contents to other social media services such as Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, WordPress and others. Letterboxd does not support any of the services within their own interface, but it allows the users to publish to these third party services, with the exception of Twitter. In the site’s most recent version, they has released an iPhone app to make it more convenient for the users to frequently and easily connect to the site, (Walker, “iOS App of the Week”).

In terms of Letterboxd as a social platform, our research indicates that it is not a system built to be widely accepted and embraced by mass culture, but rather a niche social network intended for a specific, dedicated group of individuals. It embraces some of the widely-accepted norms of popular social networks, such as liking and commenting, and can be linked to those larger networks. However, as a social ecosystem, it is intended to facilitate discussion of and appreciation of film for cinephiles. It does not seek to dominate the social landscape, but parleys the seemingly unapproachable nature of film review into social discourse and interaction, encouraging users to share, discuss, debate, and learn in a contained, dedicated, supporting environment. It still gives priority based on popularity and visibility, but said popularity is not dictated necessarily by outside forces, but instead by semi-democratic means. The posts and users that get promoted are the ones that are most popular in that week, not those who are notable for huge accomplishments or fame. Letterboxd set out to be, and remains, a relatively niche, closed system, constructed and maintained by film lovers, for film lovers.

Works Cited

Lucca, Violet. "Popular Opinions." Film Comment 49.4 (2013): 10. Academic Search Complete. Web. 20 Feb. 2017.

TechCrunch. "Keep Track Of Movies With Letterboxd's New App." Online video clip. YouTube. YouTube, 17 March 2016. Web. 20 February 2017.

Van Djick, Jose, “Chapter 2: Disassembling Platforms, Reassembling Sociality,” The Culture of Connectivity: A Critical History of Social Media, Oxford, NY, New York, 2013.

Sawers, Paul. "Letterboxd Goes Freemium & Finally Opens to Everyone." The Next Web. TheNextWeb, 08 Feb. 2013. Web. 19 Feb. 2017.

Walker, Marshall. "IOS App of the Week: Letterboxd - The Social Network for Film Lovers." IOS App of the Week: Letterboxd - The Social Network for Film Lovers | The IPhone FAQ. Cignal Media LLC, 20 Jan. 2017. Web. 18 Feb. 2017.

Hamrah, A. S. "The New Cinephilia/The Permanent Crisis Of Film Criticism: The Anxiety Of Authority." Cineaste 41.2 (2016): 70-71. Academic Search Complete. Web. 21 Feb. 2017.

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“Pro.” Letterboxd. Letterboxd Limited. Web. 18 Feb. 2017. <https://letterboxd.com/about/pro/>

“Privacy policy.” Letterboxd. Letterboxd Limited. Web. 18 Feb. 2017. <https://letterboxd.com/legal/privacy-policy/>

“Community policy.” Letterboxd. Letterboxd Limited. Web. 18 Feb. 2017. <https://letterboxd.com/legal/community-policy/>

“Importing data.” Letterboxd. Letterboxd Limited. Web. 18 Feb. 2017. <https://letterboxd.com/about/importing-data/>