Social Live-streaming: Twitch.tv

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.