Twitch Users' Motivations and Practices During Community Mental Health Discussions

Abstract

Live streaming is a form of media that allows streamers to directly interact with their audience. Previous research has explored mental health, Twitch.tv and live streaming platforms, and users' social motivations behind watching live streams separately. However, few have explored how these all intertwine in conversations involving intimate, self-disclosing topics, such as mental health. Live streams are unique in that they are largely masspersonal in nature; streamers broadcast themselves to mostly unknown viewers, but may choose to interact with them in a personal way. This study aims to understand users' motivations, preferences, and habits behind participating in mental health discussions on live streams. We interviewed 25 Twitch viewers about the streamers they watch, how they interact in mental health discussions, and how they believe streamers should discuss mental health on live streams. Our findings are contextualized in the dynamics in which these discussions occur. Overall, we found that the innate design of the Twitch platform promotes a user-hierarchy in the ecosystem of streamers and their communities, which may affect how mental health is discussed.

Does aggressive commentary by streamers during violent video game affect state aggression in adolescents?

“…In this specific situation, higher affective empathy could lead to higher emotions related to threats and subsequent higher state aggression. This aligns with earlier studies on live-streaming, which found that viewers tend to have an emotional and empathic response when streamers disclose personal mental health issues (e.g., Gandhi et al, 2021;Uttarapong et al, 2022). This indicates that viewers with a high level of affective empathy can be deeply affected by the emotional experiences of streamers.…”

“…During the early 2010s and as a result of broadcasting of major e-sports tournaments, live-streaming services gained huge popularity, and their audiences are still growing. For example, Twitch.tv, the largest live-streaming service, averaged 2.78 million concurrent online viewers and 8.46 million monthly broadcasters in 2021 (TwitchTracker, 2022). The main content of these services is the live-streaming of streamers (broadcasters) while playing various video games.…”

Exploring the Effects of AI-assisted Emotional Support Processes in Online Mental Health Community

“…Online mental health communities (OMHCs) are the prevalent medium of exchanging social support with peers experiencing similar challenges, providing high accessibility and anonymity [21,24,25,28,38]. To date, several studies have explored the dynamics of peer supports in OMHCs or mental health-related discussions, such as relationship between user satisfaction and their community knowledge [28], cross-cultural variances of OMHCs [26], and motivations and practices of mental health discussions in Twitch [40].…”

Percepciones masculinas sobre el auspicio de marcas en transmisiones de mujeres streamers de videojuegos

“…En muchos casos reportados, las transmisiones han devenido en acusaciones por parte de las mujeres quienes aseguran haber sufrido acoso sexual en sus redes sociales y en plataformas como Twitch (María M., 2020). Asimismo, las formas de acoso que reciben las streamers incluyen el flaming (insultos y lenguaje negativo hacia la persona), el doxing (divulgación pública sobre la información e imagen personal) y el acoso cibernético (denigrar de manera intimidante y continuadamente) (Uttarapong et al, 2022).…”