Goal

The goal was to understand how streamers build communities on Twitch.

Role

Researcher, Presenter

Process

• What is Twitch.tv?

  In order to conduct research on Twitch, we first had to know what it offered to users. After gaining background knowledge about Twitch, we could begin observations and interviews.
  
  

• Observations

  During observations, some things that we looked at were:
  • Streamers with different sized followings
  • Chat interactions/participants
  • Information shared on their channels
  • "Profile" including social media links
  • How they acted when live streaming
  • Things they said when live streaming
  

  

  
  

  

• Interviews

  
  Streamers

  Questions were geared towards how they got into streaming, and how they build online communities while streaming.

  Examples

  • "What was the motivation behind becoming a streamer?”
  • “What do you think are the most important things for a streamer to do in order to build a community?"

  
  

  Viewers

  Questions were geared toward streamers that they watch and interactions with users of Twitch.

  Examples

  • “What streamers do you like to watch?”
  • “Could you describe a few personality traits of streamers you enjoy watching?”
  • “Have you ever interacted with a streamer that you watch?”

• Analyze data and identify themes, problems, solutions, and implications

  While analyzing data, we found that streamers use four main strategies to grow their respective communities. These strategies are
  
  1. Consistency
  2. Chat Engagement
  3. Personality/Character traits
  4. Social Media
  Problems we found:
  1. Competition
  2. The display of rules on channels

• Present findings and research paper

  We presented our findings and submitted our research paper.
  
  • Final Presentation

Skills

Ethnography, data collection, data analysis, interviews, research, writing

Insights

I learned that ethnographic studies can provide insight into the social and organizational aspects and implications of information technology and digital media. I learned how to formulate interview questions that will lead to insightful answers and how to analyze data to find major themes.