You Watch, You Give, and You Engage

Abstract

Despite gaining traction in North America, live streaming has not reached the popularity it has in China, where livestreaming has a tremendous impact on the social behaviors of users. To better understand this socio-technological phenomenon, we conducted a mixed methods study of live streaming practices in China. We present the results of an online survey of 527 live streaming users, focusing on their broadcasting or viewing practices and the experiences they find most engaging. We also interviewed 14 active users to explore their motivations and experiences. Our data revealed the different categories of content that was broadcasted and how varying aspects of this content engaged viewers. We also gained insight into the role reward systems and fan group-chat play in engaging users, while also finding evidence that both viewers and streamers desire deeper channels and mechanisms for interaction in addition to the commenting, gifting, and fan groups that are available today.

Who Watches Live Streaming in China? Examining Viewers’ Behaviors, Personality Traits, and Motivations

“…In terms of live streaming behaviors, Zhou (2017) explored the associations among users' demographics, usage, and perceptions of live streaming. Lu et al (2018) investigated how content influences viewing behavior and engagement in Chinese live streaming.…”

“…Recently, research investigated what drives people to tip and found that social interaction plays an important role (Deng and Chau, 2019;Lee et al, 2019). Lu et al (2018) interviewed users and suggested that tipping facilitates users to present and express themselves. Tipping also helps viewers win attention and admiration from other viewers.…”

“…The community of live streaming is centered on the interaction of creating and sharing content of diverging interests. Live streaming in China accommodates broad topics, such as education or creative project making; it can fit the diverse interests of open people (Lu et al, 2018(Lu et al, , 2019a. This attracts high openness personality profiles of viewers.…”

Mapping Design Spaces for Audience Participation in Game Live Streaming

“…Viewers typically react to the content, streamers, and one other though text-based communication channels, however an emerging trend in live streaming shifts emphasis of the medium from spectatorship to social interactions between streamers and their viewers [50]. For instance, viewers can respond to content, streamers, and one another via a text chat, emojis, and gifts [51,81].…”

“…This includes infuencing-in game challenges [66,77], placing bets [60], giving hits [48], and even controlling gameplay [45,47,62]. In spite of the benefts of rich audience participation dynamics, many live streaming platforms primarily support classic participatory mechanics, such as commenting via a text chat, emoting with icons, and gifting money [35,51,81,84]. One reason for this is that game live-streaming presently lacks an explicit representation of the design space in game live streaming.…”