RECONTEXTUALIZING VIOLENCE IN REAL TIME: LIVE STREAMING & THE GOVERNANCE OF INCONSISTENCY ON TWITCH.TV

Abstract

How does inconsistency become an institution? Here, we examine platform governance and moderation on Amazon’s Twitch.tv as a cultural practice. Through case studies and thematic analysis, we showcase moments of regulatory inconsistency that are constitutive of how Twitch manages harm. Our analysis identifies contexts, temporalities, and violence as critical themes for identifying Twitch’s inconsistent moderation. We offer a playbook for better understanding live streaming platform governance as an iterative process which frequently targets vulnerable streamers. We applied thematic analysis to two case studies to document how regulatory inconsistencies are directed at historically marginalized streamers. These cases include Twitch’s response to: 1) Kai Cenat’s impromptu community meet-up which was labeled a riot by the NYPD and 2) When Twitch modified their clothing and attire policy three times in one month to curtail the so-called ‘topless meta’, where a handful of women staged their cleavage to imply full nudity and optimize viewer engagement.