Analyzing the Cascade of the “Queen’s Gambit”
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/23/arts/television/chess-set-board-sales.html
It’s no lie that Netflix has solidified their position as a streaming media juggernaut, with over 190 million subscribers tuning into the latest shows and movies the company has to offer. Netflix has turned into an oasis for people to stream media and pass the time, especially during a pandemic that has curbed people to their homes. On October 23, Netflix decided to release their own original mini-series, the Queen’s Gambit. It’s a story about a young chess prodigy in the 50s and 60s learning the game, becoming a world champion, and dealing with various obstacles throughout her journey. What’s even more interesting is the effect of this Netflix series. According to this article in New York Times, there has been a serious resurgence in chess, mostly brought on through the introduction of the series. The surge is so great, they have seen a growth of over 125% in searches of chess, and 1000% in the sales of chess boards. In order to really understand the effects of the new series, we will look at it from a cascade perspective and see how information and interest is diffused through social networks.
In order to show the cascade, I drew out an average family with 2 parents and 2 children. For our sake, we will assume that the parents aren’t getting media influence from a lot of their friends for shows, but rather from their kids and the streaming services that are advertising their content. With Netflix already having such a large subscriber base, the kids will surely be exposed before their parents to the show, hence the highlighted blue edges connecting to the children. The kids, having been influenced heavily by their friends and outside of the network sources, will take interest in chess and adopt the “chess fever”. With over 190 million accounts, and even more people exposed to the platform, it is no surprise that the hyper-connected children would be the first to be significantly influenced. Their parents are now having a choice where their kids’ influence is at a threshold of q= ⅔. Looking at parent 1, their connection to child 1 and 2 has the influence of “chess fever” while the other parent still has not adopted it. The first parents will fall to this influence by the average threshold of q>= ½ being the necessary level. Since the influence of the family network would be ⅔ which greater than ½, all of the members in the family will eventually fall into the cascade of “chess fever”.
Conclusion:
What is really interesting is how easily Netflix has been able to influence millions of people through these family networks. With children being super tied into the media and especially exposed to heavy advertisement, they will be the initial propagators of the “chess fever” in their household and slowly diffuse to the other members of the family. It is also important to note that in a more sophisticated model, the children could have stronger ties to outside the family networks as they consume and or more influenced by media, making their own personal “chess fever” adoption much more likely. The parents would also have strong links between each other making the adoption of one, cascading to the adoption by the others. What this really shows is that Netflix has not only been a revolutionary entertainment platform, but a serious opportunity for companies to use paid advertising, and product placement in order to gain interest, and watch “ whatever fever” slowly cascade across millions of families in their massive user base.