We may all know what we like to watch. Some of us may like comedies, action series/movies, romantic series/movies, etc. I wanted to do my project on my Netflix viewing history to get to know myself a little more. I want to know hat kind of series and movies I’m into. However, I can also use the results of this project to see how I can change my viewing habits to expose myself to new genres and types of movies.

To perform this study, I collected data from Netflix on the series and movies that I have watched since the start of 2019. The dataset only included the episode/movie name and the date when it was last watched. I then proceeded to add the genre, type of media (series or movie), the month it was last watched, and the country from where the series or movie originated.

The map above shows where the series and movies that I watched on Netflix originated from. As I expected, the vast majority of the series and movies originate from the United States. However, I expected there to be more series and movies from other countries, especially Spanish speaking series and movies. The second chart shows the number of episodes and movies watched without the United States. There were 45 series episodes and movies from England, followed by France, Japan, Spain, and Canada. There were also a few episodes and movies from Mexico, Argentina, and Australia. There are many good international series and movies in the streaming site that I should look into and not limit myself to only shows and movies from the United States.

The next table shows the number of series episodes and movies watched per month. I then differentiated the months between those months when college is in session and those that are not. I wanted to see if there was a relationship between the type of month and the number of episodes and movies watched. It seems like Netflix use decreases or starts to decrease as the semester begins. This could be due to me not having enough time to watch tv. Since I spend most of my time working as a teaching assistant and going to classes, I do not have enough time to be on Netflix. This is a very small sample size, but it is a good start to look for any patterns in Netflix use during and after school semesters.

 

This table shows Netflix use, differentiated by genre and type of media. I wanted to see if there was a specific genre that I preferred for series and for movies. From the table, it seems like my favorite genre to watch for both series and movies is Comedy. However, for movies, the amount of comedic and action movies are almost similar. There were 24 comedies and 21 action movies. For comedies however, the vast majority were comedic series, with a total of 324 episodes. My next favorite genres were Documentaries and action series. I thought it was interesting that I watched more Documentary series compared to Documentary movies. Prior to seeing the table, I thought the amount of Documentary movies were going to be greater than the Documentary series.

 

For my last graphic, I mapped the series that I watched the most. Creating the data for this graphic was a bit difficult since Netflix does not group the series by series name. I had to create a new variable that would be the name of the series in order to count the number of episodes I had watched for that specific series. I am a very big fan of The Office so I expected the series to be have the highest frequency. I watched a total of 190 episodes of the show, the second closest was Border Security with a total of 48 episodes. This table could also explain why comedies were a big part of the tree map for Genre Watched – Series Only. I planned on focusing my project more on The Office and analyze the episodes that I watched the most but encountered some problems with the data.

One big issue that I encountered with my data was the fact that Netflix does not repeat an episode in the dataset. Meaning, if I watched an episode in April, and rewatched it in September, the Netflix dataset will only include the show once in September. Since this was the case, I could not see which episodes I watched the most or the least. The only way to fix this issue is to manually record the number of times an episode was watched.

This was a very fun project to do that gave me a lot of insight into what I like watching. However, this is only one streaming site that I use. To get a more complete analysis into the shows and movies that I like to watch, I should have incorporated more streaming sites such as Hulu, HBO, and Showtime. Also, a sample from a longer period of time will give a more accurate insight into my viewing habits.