Mihaly Czikszentmihalyi "is chiefly renowned as the architect of the notion of flow in creativity; people enter a flow state when they are fully absorbed in activity during which they lose their sense of time and have feelings of great satisfaction."

Media flow research has traditionally understood television as a one-way uninterrupted stream of programming, rather than discrete programs. The flow delivers ads by way of shows. "The inaugural formulation is Raymond William's argument, in his 1974 book, Television: Technology and Cultural Form, that "the defining feature of broadcasting" is "'planned flow.'"

Fan-vids (videos made by and for "a subculture organized around a specific object of study,") as well as fan studies, have exploded with the internet.

Every day people have long made home movies about their daily lives. Home movie scholarship looks seriously at this non-commercial production as a resource for academic historiography, allowing us rare access to a people's eye view of trauma, memory, family, and nation. YouTube scholars address how the nature of the "private" (or domestic) has changed on-line. Dr Strangelove reports on his blog: "Home video is far and away the most popular content posted online, shared by 62% of video uploaders."