The enthnography of Russian streaming

Abstract

This paper focuses on teamwork during video game streams on the Twitch service. Using Urry’s “affective community” term, the authors try to describe how the streamer and its audience build emotional bonds, strengthening community boundaries or conflicting on some issues. Having conducted a series of interviews with streamers, as well as several observations, we derive a number of categories defining the structure of communication between the streamer and its viewers. Metaphorically, we call this structure “salon”, where the streamer is not always a central figure, but rather a moderator. Streaming is interpreted as an online form of offline mass gathering, the specifics of which is more about the horizontal structure of the community — as opposed to YouTube or Instagram* practices where the blogger takes the center stage, and the community is based on an opposition between the blogger and their audience. The article demonstrates the stability of streaming communities. Due to their all-permeating structure (messengers, social networks, message boards, etc.), on the one hand, and due to emotional bond generated via experiencing affectus of involvement, on the other hand, such communities are platform-independent associations of people who are capable of migration between platform, of economic and emotional solidarity, and of stability against prolonged hiatuses in nominal activity of the community-building streamer.