Kollegienhaus, lecture theatre 116
Organizer:
Prof. Dr Miriam Locher
Researching Online Gaming Communities on Twitch
In this talk, I will discuss my ongoing research investigating interactions on Twitch during live gaming streams. Audiences interact during a live broadcast through the chat, and for many, this communal viewing and the ensuing social interactions are important reasons to engage with live streams (Hamilton et al., 2014; Hilvert-Bruce et al., 2018; Wohn and Freeman, 2020). Twitch chats can therefore be considered "third places" (Oldman, 1989) where diverse and anonymous crowds meet and interact in pursuit of sociability and community (Hamilton et al., 2014).
After first introducing some of the platform's affordances that facilitate this goal, I will focus on the highly innovative interactional practices developed by chatters. These practices include new word formations, emote use, in-jokes, repetition and variation, practices that simultaneously fulfil a strong community-affirming function while also allowing users to address platform constraints, such as the need to communicate at great speed and concurrently with other users, while fostering joint attention amidst a range of stimuli. Ethical and practical issues of the research will be addressed before focusing on a sub-study into community creation through artifact-oriented stancetaking.
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