Journalists and communicators on Twitch: media beyond social networks

Authors

Abstract

Journalists and communicators discovered Twitch in mid-2020, during the months of quarantine imposed by Covid-19, during which a large part of the population used the Internet to seek communication with the outside world that confinement prevented. Given its content, dedicated to e-sports, and the youth of its followers, this specialized social network had gone unnoticed by the general public for years. Having initially been a platform for broadcasting video games, thanks to the arrival of journalists it started to become a space for information and entertainment, with the creation of new channels aimed at a more adult audience. The aim of this paper is to analyse the presence of journalists and communicators on Twitch, how they structure their channels, the use they make of this platform compared to other similar platforms, the differences and similarities in their use of the platform compared to the streamers already present on Twitch and, finally, to evaluate whether Twitch meets the necessary conditions to become an appropriate medium for news communication. By looking at the content generated on Twitch by five journalists and communicators, we study how they adapt their channels to the common characteristics of the platform, which can be seen in the behaviours and content generated by video game creators.

Keywords

Twitch, gamers, video game, journalism, social networks

References

BAUTISTA, J. R.; LIN, T. T. C. y THENG, Y. L. (2016). «How and why users use social TV systems?: A systematic review of user studies». Proceedings of the Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, 2016-March, 3868-3877. https://doi.org/10.1109/HICSS.2016.482

BINGHAM, C. M. (2020). «Talking about Twitch: Dropped Frames and a normative theory of new media production». Convergence, 26 (2), 269-286. https://doi.org/10.1177/1354856517736974

BROWNING, K. (2022). «Twitch Says It Will Bar Chronic Spreaders of Misinformation». The New York Times. Recuperado de https://tinyurl.com/3d6rty35.

CESAR, P. y GEERTS, D. (2011). «Past, present, and future of social TV: A categorization». 3rd IEEE International Workshop on Social TV - The Next Wave, 347-351. https://doi.org/10.1109/CCNC.2011.5766487

CHAE, S. y LEE, S. (2022). «Sharing emotion while spectating video game play: Exploring Twitch users’ emotional change after the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic». Computers in Human Behavior, 131, 107-211. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2022.107211

DIWANJI, V.; REED, A.; FERCHAUD, A.; SEIBERT, J.; WEINBRECHT, V. y SELLERS, N. (2020). «Don’t just watch, join in: Exploring information behavior and copresence on Twitch». Computers in Human Behavior, 105, 106-221. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2019.106221

DUX, J. y KIM, J. (2018). «Social live-streaming: Twitch. TV and uses and gratification theory social network analysis». Computer Science & Information Technology, 47. https://doi.org/10.5121/csit.2018.80305

GARCÍA, A. (2021). «El ‘streamer’ español TheGrefg dinamita el récord de Twitch con 2,5 millones de espectadores simultáneos». La Vanguardia. Recuperado de https://tinyurl.com/yhtsbjyb.

GITTLESON, K. (2014). «Amazon buys video-game streaming site Twitch». BBC News. Recuperado de https://tinyurl.com/ydd9yxvh.

GUTIÉRREZ LOZANO, J. F. y CUARTERO, A. (2020). «El auge de Twitch: Nuevas ofertas audiovisuales y cambios del consumo televisivo entre la audiencia juvenil». Ámbitos: Revista Internacional de Comunicación, 50, 159-175. https://doi.org/10.12795/Ambitos.2020.i50.11

HAMAGUCHI, N.; FUJISAWA, H.; MIYAZAKI, M.; YONEKURA, R. y NISHIMURA, S. (2012). «Investigating trends in social TV services based on user participating experiments». Proceedings of the 2012 15th International Conference on Network-Based Information Systems, NBIS 2012, 873-878. https://doi.org/10.1109/NBiS.2012.16

HILVERT-BRUCE, Z.; NEILL, J.; SJÖBLOM, M. y HAMARI, J. (2018). «Social motivations of live-streaming viewer engagement on Twitch». Computers in Human Behavior, 84, 58-67. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2018.02.013

JUNG, H. y PHOA, F. K. H. (2021). «On the effects of capability and popularity on network dynamics with applications to YouTube and Twitch networks». Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, 571, 125-663. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.physa.2020.125663

KAVANAGH, D. (2019). «Watch and Learn: The Meteoric Rise of Twitch». GlobalWebIndex. Recuperado de https://bit.ly/3cLLB6E.

MALLARI, K.; WILLIAMS, S. y HSIEH, G. (2021). «Understanding Analytics Needs of Video Game Streamers». En CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI’21). Mayo 8-13, ACM, 12 p. https://doi.org/10.1145/3411764.3445320

MANTZARI, E.; LEKALOS, G. y VRECHOPOULOS, A. (2008). «Social TV: Introducing Virtual Socialization in the TV Experience». First International Conference on Designing Interactive User Experiences for TV and Video, 202.

MARCOS-GARCÍA, S.; ALONSO-MUÑOZ, L. y LÓPEZ-MERI, A. (2021). «Periodismo y nuevas narrativas: Storytelling como formato de difusión informativa en redes sociales». Estudios sobre el Mensaje Periodístico, 27 (2), 553-567. https://doi.org/10.5209/esmp.71193

MORAL PÉREZ, M. E. del; GUZMÁN DUQUE, A. P. y BELLVER MORENO, M. C. (2021). «Consumo y ocio de la Generación Z en la esfera digital». Revista Prisma Social, 34, 88-105. Recuperado de https://tinyurl.com/muncptu2.

NASCIMENTO, G.; RIBEIRO, M.; CERF, L.; CESÁRIO, N.; KAYTOUE, M.; RAÏSSI, C.; VASCONCELOS, T. y MEIRA, W. (2014). «Modeling and Analyzing the Video Game Live-Streaming Community». 2014 9th Latin American Web Congress, 1-9. https://doi.org/10.1109/LAWeb.2014.9

ODUNAIYA, O.; AGOYI, M. y OSEMEAHON, O. S. (2020). «Social TV engagement for increasing and sustaining social TV viewers». Sustainability (Switzerland), 12 (12), 4906. https://doi.org/10.3390/SU12124906

PAGANI, M. y MIRABELLO, A. (2011). «The influence of personal and social-interactive engagement in social TV web sites». International Journal of Electronic Commerce, 16 (2), 41-67. https://doi.org/10.2753/JEC1086-4415160203

QUINTAS-FROUFE, N. y GONZÁLEZ-NEIRA, A. (2022). «First Studies of the Migration of Television Content to Twitch in Spain». En: Á. ROCHA, D. BARREDO, P. C. LÓPEZ-LÓPEZ e I. PUENTES-RIVERA (eds.). Communication and Smart Technologies. ICOMTA 2021. Smart Innovation, Systems and Technologies, 259. Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-5792-4_36

SALAVERRÍA, R. (2019). «Digital journalism: 25 years of research. Review article». El Profesional de la Información, 28 (1), e280101. https://doi.org/10.3145/epi.2019.ene.01

SCHULTZ, A. y PARIKH, J. (2020). «Keeping our services stable and reliable during the COVID-19 outbreak». Meta. Recuperado de https://tinyurl.com/2p8t8nxk.

SCOLARI, C. (2008). «Hacia la hipertelevisión: Los primeros síntomas de una nueva configuración del dispositivo televisivo». Diálogos de la Comunicación, 77, 1-9.

SCOLARI, C. (2013). Homo Videoludens 2.0: De Pacman a la gamificación. Universitat de Barcelona. Transmedia XXI. Laboratori de Mitjans Interactius.

SCOLARI, C.; MASANET, M. J.; GUERRERO-PICO, M. y ESTABLÉS, M. (2018). «Transmedia literacy in the new media ecology: Teens’ transmedia skills and informal learning strategies». El Profesional de la Información, 27 (4), 801812. https://doi.org/10.3145/epi.2018.jul.09

SHERMAN, A. (2020). «TikTok reveals detailed user numbers for the first time». CNBC (24 de agosto). Recuperado de https://tinyurl.com/2xc4nebp.

SIERRA, I. (2018). «Los YouTubers están probando Twitch porque la monetización es buena, digna y rentable». The WatMag. Recuperado de https://tinyurl.com/y73eznxj.

SJÖBLOM, M. y HAMARI, J. (2017). «Why do people watch others play video games?: An empirical study on the motivations of Twitch users». Computers in Human Behavior, 75, 985-996. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2016.10.019

TWITCH.TV (2022). Recuperado de https://affiliate.twitch.tv/es-es/. [Consulta: 10 junio 2021]

TWITCH TRACKER (2022). Recuperado de https://twitchtracker.com/. [Consulta: 17 junio 2021]

ZHAO, Q.; CHEN, C.-D.; CHENG, H.-W. y WANG, J.-L. (2018). «Determinants of live streamers’ continuance broadcasting intentions on Twitch: A self-determination theory perspective». Telematics and Informatics, 35 (2), 406-420. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tele.2017.12.018

Author Biographies

Francisco J. Olivares-García, Universidad de Sevilla

Departamento Periodismo II

Facultad de Comunicación

Profesor Asociado

Inés Méndez Majuelos, Universidad de Sevilla

Departamento de Periodismo II

Published

2022-06-30

Downloads

Download data is not yet available.