James Dux, SungKyunKwan University, South Korea

The recent explosive growth of live-streaming, particularly video game streaming on Twitch.tv, has led to the development of young communities in a diverse and frequently evolving virtual social space. This study is a Social Network Analysis that aims to uncover how communities are interlocked based on attributes such as Community membership and stream style/type. Additionally, the network geography is related to the Uses and Gratification Theory (UG) that Twitch has been proven to fulfill according to genre and stream type (Sjoblom, Torhonen, Hamari, & Macey, 2017). By collecting data in a user-based fashion and using tools like Gephi, this project presents the Twitch community in a way that reveals users’ interest seeking behavior trends. Implications from this study are a resource for: understanding Twitch and livestreaming communities at large, streamers looking for an insight into their audience’s interests, and developers seeking the best way to provide and display beneficial content.

Social Network Analysis, Uses and Gratification, Twitch.tv, Social Live Streaming, Social Communities