Remerciez-le!

Remerciez @Admin pour avoir partagé cet document gratuitement, de la manière la plus simple, en partageant sur les réseaux sociaux.

See discussions, stats, and author profiles for this publication at: https://ww

See discussions, stats, and author profiles for this publication at: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/335616330 Live Streamers on Twitch.tv as Social Media Inﬂuencers: Chances and Challenges for Strategic Communication Article in International Journal of Strategic Communication · August 2019 DOI: 10.1080/1553118X.2019.1630412 CITATIONS 44 READS 7,720 2 authors: Jamie Woodcock The Open University (UK) 28 PUBLICATIONS 872 CITATIONS SEE PROFILE Mark R Johnson The University of Sydney 36 PUBLICATIONS 786 CITATIONS SEE PROFILE All content following this page was uploaded by Mark R Johnson on 27 July 2020. The user has requested enhancement of the downloaded file. Citation: Woodcock, J., & Johnson, M. R. (2019). Live Streamers on Twitch.tv as Social Media Influencers: Chances and Challenges for Strategic Communication. International Journal of Strategic Communication, 13(4), 321-335. Live Streamers on Twitch.tv as Social Media Influencers: Chances and Challenges for Strategic Communication Abstract Twitch.tv is one of the most successful online live streaming platforms in the world, with 200m viewers, 2m regular “streamers”, and a market value of over $1bn. In this paper we offer a first conceptualisation of streamers as social media influencers, and how effectively they can perform strategic communication for sponsors. We draw on extensive ethnographic research and over a hundred semi-structured interviews with streamers to address two questions: first, how does Twitch operate as a platform for strategic communication; second, what skills do streamers need to be successful influencers? In the first case we show Twitch is well-suited to influencing, in large part due to its integration of data analytics, while streamers are using these tools to adopt a business-oriented mind-set; in the second case we show the importance of authenticity to both streamers and clients, and how channels of different sizes offer strategic communication opportunities. The paper contributes to the emerging literature on Twitch, developing insights from influencing and strategic communication; but given the increasing scope of live streaming, we also argue the phenomenon – particularly when combined with the economic dynamics of influencing – is just as important for making sense of the wider media landscape today. Introduction The term “social media influencer” has become a widespread, if sometimes nebulous, way of describing a digital celebrity who is able to inform and encourage particular consumer choices. It also in turn refers to the broader trend of companies using these social media celebrities to promote, advertise, or market their brands. This brings to mind the new celebrities of websites like photo platform Instagram, as well as scandals about non-disclosure of sponsorship deals blurring the lines between the celebrity as a genuine spokesperson for their own interests, and someone in the pocket of corporate interests. While there has been important research on Youtube (Burgess and Green, 2018) and Instagram (De Veirman, Cauberghe, and Hudders, 2017), video game live streaming platform Twitch has yet to be considered in this way. In this paper, we therefore turn the analytic lens of strategic communication to focus on the live streaming platform Twitch.tv, or simply Twitch. In 2017 and 2018 there were over two million unique monthly streamers on the platform broadcasting live video content, with several tens of thousands of partners (an influential layer of streamers who share revenue with Twitch, sometimes professionalised) and over one hundred thousand affiliates (an intermediate layer of streamers who can share revenue, semi-professionalised). The average Twitch broadcast contains live footage and sound from the digital game being played (or, rarely, the non-gaming activity taking place), a webcam showing the face and surroundings of the broadcaster, and often a number of peripheral features, such as links to other social media sites or information about recent donations or competitions. The audience is comprised of at least fifteen million daily visitors who collectively watch over three hundred billion minutes of live-streamed video content distributed via the platform each year (Twitch, 2018a). Although it remains less well- known than Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter, Twitch has become a central part of the platformized internet (Johnson and Woodcock, In Press), and an online location that is profoundly transforming the creation, broadcast, and profitability of user-made content. As such, it is both now a platform on which streaming celebrities wield significant power over their fan bases (potentially into the millions of viewers), and one that companies are increasingly looking to as an online space to develop social media influencers who will support and further their branding agendas. As such, we will explore how live streaming is developing into a form of strategic communication for companies and brands, and a major new platform for the growth and development of social media influencers. To do so we first address a literature review of Twitch and live streaming as a whole, noting both the state of present research and the gaps within that present work – such as a conceptualisation of live streamers as social media influencers. We then cover our method, consisting of both one hundred in-person interviews and extensive ethnographic observation on both Twitch itself, and many offline gaming events across several countries and two continents. We then address in detail the potential effectiveness of live streamers as influencers by drawing on this data. We demonstrate that there are many ways streamers can be effective in this role by being self-motivated and through external connections to relevant companies, that the platform encourages and regulates this sort of behaviour through the tracking of statistics and the impact of one’s broadcast, and how important performativity is to streamers looking to develop their media offerings into this direction. We then consider Twitch influencers in a wider context, asking two questions. Firstly, how does Twitch operate as a social media communication platform on which strategic communication can take place; second, what skills do Twitch streamers need to deploy if they are to be effective strategic communicators? The former of these will entail the first analysis to date of live streaming platforms from this perspective, and given the size and impact of live streaming (as we discuss shortly), this is an essential foundation for understanding live streaming’s potential for strategic communication. The latter will then progress into examining why some broadcasters are successful taking on this role, why others struggle, and how the specifics of the platform shape the nature of its communication possibilities. By combining these two, we look to present a thorough analysis of Twitch from a strategic communication perspective, and establish the basis for further enquiries of this sort into live streaming platforms. Equally, more broadly, these are increasingly important topics because very large numbers of people now regularly consume and interact with online content in this way, with the practices of streamers becoming increasingly professionalised. We conclude that Twitch is a major new platform for organisations both within and beyond the videogames industry to engage with their publics, and one with significant potential for strategic communication today. Platforms and Strategic Communication In order to address our research questions – how Twitch operates as a platform for strategic communication, and what skills must streamers deploy in this endeavour – several bodies of literature demand our attention. Specifically, we must consider live streaming as a phenomenon, Twitch as a platform, live streaming’s connections with gaming culture and practice, and strategic communication itself, especially in a context of contemporary digital social media and the opportunities afforded by such technologies and their associated communities. The newness of the platform and live streaming practice as a whole affords us significant potential for new enquiries into its impacts (in strategic communication or beyond), but also makes a thorough assessment of what little existing work there is on the practice especially important. Live streaming and Twitch To begin with live streaming, we note that the practice remains in its relative infancy, but scholarship has begun to emerge on the topic. Just as other social media platforms have reshaped different kinds of media production and enabled new kinds of influence and communication, Twitch’s central contribution to this wider phenomenon is in what we might call the democratisation of who can provide television-like content to viewers (Pires and Simon, 2015). By this we mean that through Twitch, providing live video broadcast content is no longer limited to major industrial-economic actors, but rather a possibility for a large portion of the “general public”. While Twitch shares some commonalities with other social media platforms, the ability to provide live televised content on this scale is unique to Twitch – video sharing site YouTube of course provides this ability for recorded video, but (despite its new live service) produces little live content. Specifically, Twitch is a platform on which two million people regularly broadcast their own live video content, and over one hundred million people tune in to watch this content (Twitch, 2018a). These are numbers that could compete with even the most successful traditional television channels. Like other platforms (Graham and Anwar, 2018), Twitch has created a near-global market for particular “new forms of media industry work” (Taylor, 2018, p. 35). This represents what Cunningham and Craig (2016) have called “social media entertainment”, a convergent media form which carries with uploads/Geographie/ strat-comm.pdf