The Political Turn of Twitch – Understanding Live Chat as an Emergent Political Space

Date

2022-01-04

Contributor

Advisor

Department

Instructor

Depositor

Speaker

Researcher

Consultant

Interviewer

Narrator

Transcriber

Annotator

Journal Title

Journal ISSN

Volume Title

Publisher

Volume

Number/Issue

Starting Page

Ending Page

Alternative Title

Abstract

Research and media have all emphasized the importance of digital platforms such as Twitter and Facebook in contemporary political activism. Yet, little is known of the politicization of other digital platforms, such as Reddit, Twitch, and Discord, and how such politicization is manifested. By politicization, we refer to the emergence of political messages in a “decidedly a-political” space. In this paper, we explore a case of politicization on Twitch, a live streaming platform associated with the gaming community. We focus on the live chat, a central feature of Twitch. Our analysis illustrates rapidly emergent actor roles and their respective use of different features in posting (and objecting to) political messaging. We develop a model that illustrates the dynamic between actors and conclude with implications for research and practice.

Description

Keywords

Games and Gaming, actor roles, live chat, political activism, twitch

Citation

Extent

10 pages

Format

Geographic Location

Time Period

Related To

Proceedings of the 55th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences

Related To (URI)

Table of Contents

Rights

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International

Rights Holder

Local Contexts

Collections

Email libraryada-l@lists.hawaii.edu if you need this content in ADA-compliant format.