Talking about Twitch: Dropped Frames and a normative theory of new media production

Abstract

Twitch is an online video distribution platform that allows users to broadcast live video of themselves playing videogames. This distribution infrastructure includes features that allow viewers to financially support their favorite Twitch streamers, creating a new type of media professional: the entrepreneurial Twitch streamer. Like other professionals, Twitch streamers meet regularly to discuss the profession and business of live streaming. This article applies critical discourse analysis to one such venue for insider dialogue on professional Twitch streaming: the weekly talk show, Dropped Frames. On this program, professional broadcasters discuss many aspects of their career, such as Twitch’s corporate presence, production technology, the time and effort required to stream, precarity, their relationship to their community, the data they use to run their channels, the games they play, and their relationship to game developers. Speech within these empirically present categories demonstrates an underlying set of common assumptions about how the streaming industry should function. In other words, professional Twitch broadcasters develop a normative theory of streaming practice that is expressed in their speech. I argue that through their speech, professional Twitch streamers demonstrate a theoretical understanding of professional streaming that is based on their ability to negotiate uncertainty and the responsibility they feel for their communities.