‘Less toxic and more empathetic’: examining Australian live streamers and viewers on Twitch

Abstract

In this paper we present the first study of those who watch Australian live streamers on Twitch. Drawing on a survey of 779 Australian and non-Australian viewers of Australian live streamers, we present three key findings and analyses. Firstly, Australian viewers of Australian streamers prioritise feeling community with fellow Australians, but non-Australians express no comparable interest in Australia-focused Twitch communities. Secondly, Australian viewers strongly value the comfort of Australian live streamers’ familiar culture, while non-Australian viewers highly value the novelty of that same (but for them unfamiliar) culture. Thirdly, both groups appreciate the attitudes of Australian live streamers, who were universally described as unlike other live streamers – more relaxed, open, laid-back, and less competitive. We therefore demonstrate viewers do watch Twitch channels because of the broadcaster's nationality, but the nature of the driving interests differs significantly for those who are local to the streamer, and those who are not.

Introduction

When a user financially supports the Twitch channel we’re currently watching, a small video clip pops up in the corner of the streamer's broadcast. It is a short excerpt from a famous advert for the so-called ‘Lube Mobile’, an Australian mechanic and repair service that comes to your home. The service's catchy tune and name that begs for double entendre have combined to make it an unintended source of humour amongst young Australians. In the channel's accompanying textual ‘chat’ window, meanwhile, the subscriber icons – for viewers who financially support the stream – all represent well-known Australian foods and snacks. The custom ‘emotes’ in this channel – Twitch's term for ‘emojis’, small artistic representations of faces or other graphics – also exhibit a distinctly Australian flavour, with endearing purple koalas in a variety of poses (smirking, carrying a heart, crying, etc.). Also included is a graphical representation of the letters ‘OH NOR’, representing a supposedly Australian pronunciation of ‘oh no’. Watching the channel it becomes clear that in this live stream such Australian identity markers occupy an interesting dual role – they simultaneously explicitly mark the channel out as being ‘Australian’, but they also allow the streamer to reflect with seemingly genuine amusement on noteworthy, archetypal or idiosyncratic elements of Australian culture and history. Many streamers reveal their country of origin and facilitate discussions about national cultures and differences with their viewers – yet beyond a few studies (e.g. Montardo et al., 2017; Sixto-García and Losada-Fernández, 2023) national or cultural distinctions or identities in game live streaming practices and experiences have yet to be studied in much detail. This is most likely due to the implicit and assumed ‘American-ness’ of the quotidian live streamer on Twitch (Johnson, 2024; Ruberg, 2021; Taylor, 2018) – itself an American company. Yet what makes live streaming so distinctive is the ability for anyone, from almost any country, to develop something akin to a personalised television channel, and broadcast its material globally. How, then, are Australian live streamers faring on Twitch, and who is watching them?

This paper seeks to answer these questions. Specifically, it offers a first study of the motivations and interests of Twitch viewers – both from Australia and abroad – who watch live streamers from Australia. After a review of current research directions in Australian digital gaming and global live streaming, we relate our methodology, which involved distributing a survey to 779 viewers of Australian live streamers. From this data our discussion then has three parts. Firstly, we explore the central role of community in the attraction of Australian live streamers, showing that Australian viewers appreciate the opportunity to forge social connections with their compatriots, while non-Australian viewers find Australian Twitch communities to be no different from any others. This demonstrates clearly for the first time that nationally-specific Twitch streams can offer (or fail to offer) different rewards to users – even those who share a language – depending on their national backgrounds. Secondly, we discuss live streaming channel culture, showing that both Australians and non-Australians are strongly drawn to the cultural elements of Australian live streaming. Unlike the community discussion, this finding demonstrates that nationally distinct parts of a Twitch channel can also offer the same thing to viewers, irrespective of their national background – but that this is still contingent on a strongly presented national identity. Thirdly, we turn from culture to attitude, and note again how viewers both domestic and abroad expressed a strong appreciation for the attitude of Australian live streamers, often emphasising their humour, their authenticity, and how unlike other live streamers they are perceived as being. Here we delve more deeply into the norms of live streaming and live streamers, showing how the Australian live streamer appears a novel and distinct type of broadcaster who stands in some ways alongside, but in some ways very far away from, live streaming norms. Overall our paper thus demonstrates that nationality, and the presentation and articulation of that nationality, are vital elements in Twitch streaming which have rarely seen much attention. In doing so we also shed light for the first time on Australian live streamers, and Australian live streaming viewers, neither of which have been studied before.

Existing research

Game-playing is a global phenomenon, but this does not prevent gaming behaviours and experiences from varying from country to country. In the case of Australia, gaming is as ubiquitous as in any other wealthy industrialised nation, with over 80% of young Australians (15–34) being gamers (Gibbs et al., 2018: 15) and Australians supposedly spending more on games than on music or video (Hinton, 2009: 39). Scholars have addressed several areas of the Australian gaming experience, such as the gradual growth of ‘esports’ or competitive gaming in the country (Gibbs et al., 2018), the rise and impact of Australia's independent game developers (Keogh, 2021), the use of Australia as a representational element in games (Apperley, 2006), and trends of game playing amongst Australian school students (Muspratt and Apperley, 2012). Of particular note is how, despite Australia being ‘spatially remote from the centers of publisher power and hubs of creative ferment’ in the games industry (Curtin and Sanson, 2015: 186), the nation has produced a number of breakthrough successes in recent years, such as anarchic waterfowl adventure Untitled Goose Game (House House, 2019). Nevertheless, compared to countries with more globally visible or influential gaming cultures, such as Japan or the United States, scholarship on Australian gaming (and by extension Australian gamers) remains relatively limited. Australia is ultimately not often mentioned as a topic in digital gaming communities (Carter et al., 2015: 1), but this paper will be one step towards addressing this lack – specifically in the context of game live streaming, which has emerged as a major element of contemporary global gaming and gamer culture.

It is into this context that the live streaming of games (Johnson, 2024) emerges. As a practice that is now well over a decade old in its current and highly popular form – with antecedents which stretch back much further (Taylor, 2018) – game live streaming involves a broadcaster, known as a ‘streamer’, using screen capture technology to broadcast their gaming activities, and generally but not always a webcam image of their head and upper body (and sometimes their hands), to online audiences. The smallest of live streamers (Consalvo et al., 2025) have no viewers, or perhaps just a handful – sometimes close offline friends – while the most successful bring in potentially hundreds of thousands of regular viewers (Johnson and Woodcock, 2017), with a substantial portion tuning in to watch at any one time. When it comes to viewers, a wide range of different motivations for Twitch viewing have been identified by researchers, including a feeling of belonging and community (Hilvert-Bruce et al., 2018; Küper and Krämer, 2021), humour (Johnson, 2022; Pellicone and Ahn, 2017), the ability to keep up with gaming and geek culture (Johnson, 2024; Johnson and Woodcock, 2019), the potential for background noise or viewing while doing other things (Ask et al., 2019; Orme, 2022), and the feeling of engaging with online celebrities (Johnson, 2024; Taylor, 2018). However, little has been said about nationality on Twitch, and nothing has been said of Australian live streamers, or their relationships and behaviours on a platform that is coded overwhelmingly North American. This paper hence intends to address both, exploring how nationality affects viewer interest in live streaming channels, and for the first time shed light on a category of Australian media creatives who have never before been studied. With this in mind, we proceed now to outlining our methodology.

Methodology

This study utilised a survey to gather answers from viewers of Australian livestreams, both in Australia and abroad. To ensure the survey could reach the largest number of livestream viewers, we enlisted Australian streamers themselves to aid in spreading and sharing it. Potential streamers were first identified through searching for the ‘Australian’ content tag in Twitch's search function, although this was limited by the fact that it would only display streams that were live at the time of search, and content tags must be voluntarily added by the streamer. Nevertheless, checking this tag at different times of day allowed us to identify a large number of channels. More still were identified by checking the follow-lists of known Australian streamers on Twitter, as many streamers use Twitter for announcements and side-content. We also utilised a list of Australian streamers put together as part of a prior study focusing on Australian streamers themselves, assembled using the same methods. Most of those identified had at least a substantial level of viewership, consistently bringing in hundreds of concurrent viewers, or at least several dozen. Most appeared to be earning some income from their channels, and most seemed likely to also have full-time employment (in some cases explicitly stated), or at least other additional sources of income. All those we contacted were primarily or exclusively game streamers, which is the dominant content type on the platform (Johnson, 2024). These streamers were contacted via email, Twitter DMs (‘direct messages’), or via DMs using the online chat platform Discord, with the vector(s) chosen based on which of these were publicly available, open, and advertised as the preferred avenue for business contact. Streamers were introduced to the study, asked if they were interested in seeing the results (whether or not they participated), and given the opportunity to ask questions before deciding whether to participate. Our introductory email included a link to the questionnaire for sharing with their viewers, along with suggestions of potential ways to share it, such as by linking and mentioning it on stream, by posting it to their community spaces on Discord, and/or by posting it to their dedicated subreddit, if they had either of the latter. Which vectors streamers used was left to their discretion.

The survey in question was created and hosted using Qualtrics and incorporated a mix of closed and open-ended questions. The former questions included a number aimed at gathering basic demographic information to contextualise the sample, as well as questions regarding what countries respondents watched streamers form besides Australia. The latter focused more on whether and how any ‘Australian-ness’ of the Australian streamers they watched was a factor in their decision to be a viewer of their streams. The open-ended questions addressed these three possible combinations of respondents and viewing (Australians who watch Australians, non-Australians who watch Australians, Australians who watch non-Australians), asking each category to explain ‘why you watch these channels’ and encouraging them to ‘go into as much detail as you want’ in the answers. Many were generous enough to give substantial responses here, and even those who did not still gave valuable insights that allowed us to identify the most common feelings amongst the three groups. The survey thus sought to identify what Australian viewers found interesting about Australian and non-Australian streamers, and as well as what non-Australian viewers found interesting about Australian streamers. The questionnaire was kept open for a period of several months to ensure ample time for respondent viewers to complete it, as well as to account for the ongoing process of contacting additional, newly identified streamers about the project. Ultimately 284 respondents (36%) reported being based in Australia, with the remainder abroad – of those, 54% resided in North America, 34% in Europe, and the remainder in Asia, other parts of Oceania, and rarely, South America and Africa. Once closed, the final dataset of 779 responses were analysed (although some did not answer all questions), with responses to the open-ended questions subject to content analysis and coded based on what participants mentioned were motivating or interesting factors in their decisions to watch Australian streamers. The discussion which follows utilises this analysis and draws heavily on direct quotes from our respondents; a very small number of quotes have been lightly polished for clarity, such as by fixing a common typo or spelling mistake.

Discussion

Community

Our study found first that Australian viewers of Australian live streamers are very positive about the Australian-ness of these broadcasters, and position this as a key aspect of their appeal in contrast to other live streamers. One respondent described it as being ‘homely to be around these people’, and that they were ‘more likely to donate and pay for subscriptions to Aussie streamers because I feel like I'm helping a more local community and feel “closer” to these people in a way’. Another told us that ‘a sense of community and relatability’ was important to them in following Australian broadcasters, and one also commented on the cultural ideal of ‘mateship’, which ‘Australians would know is a big thing in Australia’ and something they valued highly in these broadcasters. Mateship is understood in Australia as a form of interpersonal relating which foregrounds ‘loyalty [and] non-pretentiousness’ in the context of ‘men's same-sex friendships’ (Butera, 2008: 265), but also as a ‘civic ideal’ (Carlin et al., 2022) that emphasises caring for one's mates ‘both physically and spiritually’ (Seal, 2004: 66). A claim that such values can exist in a live streaming context is very interesting, especially when so many streamers and scholars alike emphasise instead the presence of so-called ‘parasocial relationships’ (e.g. Kowert and Daniel, 2021; McLaughlin and Wohn, 2021; Sherrick et al., 2023) that seem, in their one-sided nature where a viewer knows much about a streamer but the streamer knows little about a viewer, the antithesis of true friendships and true loyalties. There is, however, some interesting overlap here with scholarship on mental health (Johnson, 2019) communities on Twitch, as well as the site's more ‘wholesome’ or ‘cozy’ communities (Youngblood, 2022), perhaps showing us that seeking such values on Twitch is not quite so unusual as it first seems. ¹

Others, meanwhile, wrote that it was important to ‘support my peers and help create a stronger community for Australian content creators’; that Australian streamers ‘are part of the same friend group and because of that their combined viewers has a greater feeling of community’; and that Australian channels almost always have an ‘Australian community in chat’ – which was positioned as being very desirable. This last respondent also said this geographical proximity additionally offers opportunities to ‘play games with Australian streamers’ because they’ll be using the same game servers. Similar comments were echoed elsewhere in the survey by Australian viewers, with other such respondents writing that they’d been able to ‘make friends with other Australians by watching Australian streamers’, and that these channels opened up the possibility to ‘join in local communities and potentially have in person meet ups at public events’ in a way not possible with streamers from Europe or North America (or elsewhere). These responses drew attention to potential personal and even offline benefits that following Australian live streamers might yield, giving a sense again of possibilities for friendship and interaction that might move beyond the parasocial, and indeed even potentially beyond the context of Twitch itself. Australia is quite geographically distant from the world's most prominent hubs of gaming, such as North America (O’Donnell, 2012), Europe (Latorre, 2013; Wolf, 2015), mainland China (Liboriussen and Martin, 2016; Lu, 2016) and South Korea (Jin, 2010), and Japan (Consalvo, 2022), and is known for having internet connections that can be less reliable and thus less viable for global competition than many comparable Global North countries (Gibbs et al., 2018). Such factors help us to understand the appeal of this element for Australians, and the apparent desire for Twitch to help foster Australian gaming communities and connections.

Non-Australian viewers, by contrast, expressed no comparable comments about the value of Australian-focused live streaming communities. Instead, their comments were very much in line with the positive comments one would expect to see in discussion of any Twitch community with loyal and dedicated viewers. For example, one wrote that the community of an Australian streamer they watched ‘aligns with my values’, while another answered that they’d found Australian streamers to be ‘very kind’ and have ‘awesome communities’, and a third respondent described an Australian Twitch community as ‘outstanding’. Others described these communities as ‘diverse’ and ‘entertaining’, full of people with ‘similar interests to me’ and populated with ‘very kind, caring individuals’ who make for ‘supportive communities’. Two also commented on feelings of safety and comfort, with one stating ‘the community they have built [is] nice and is something I can consider a safe space for viewers’, and the other writing that the ‘safety’ of communities around Australian live streamers is ‘just unmatched’. Outside of the above respondent commenting on the unusually high feeling of comfort in Australian LGBTQ+ communities, the key observation here is that these are all comments one would find enthusiastic community members making about any Twitch community (if it deserved such praise). Indeed, one respondent even explicitly said ‘I do not think the fact that they are Australian has anything to do with why I follow or subscribe to their channels’.

These two bodies of data give us our first key finding – that Australian Twitch communities strongly appeal to Australian viewers, but any Australian-ness is not a central appeal for non-Australian viewers. Prior research has established the appeal of ‘community’ as key to the appeal of sites like Twitch (Kersting et al., 2021; Taylor, 2018). In more recent work Johnson (2024) also emphasises how gaming communities and live streaming communities very easily flow together, overlap, and mutually support one another. Orme (2022), in turn, notes that the communities of Twitch can even appeal to those who might not, themselves, be particularly avid gamers. What we therefore see is that communities – a central appeal of Twitch – around Australian live streams are very differently understood by Australians and non-Australians. For Australians the specifically Australian-ness of these communities (as they perceive it) is of high importance and high value, while non-Australians didn’t articulate any particular desire for the communities they join on Twitch to be Australian (and sometimes actively disregarded the idea that they cared about the communities being Australian-based). This demonstrates that a given aspect of a Twitch stream, such as community, can have different appeals for those local to the streamer and those living further afield. Streams in which nationality is strongly highlighted can thus offer things to the local viewer they do not offer to the international viewer – unlike other aspects, such as humour or entertainment, which appear far less nationally bounded. This is an important finding which grows our understanding of nationality on Twitch, and also enables us to begin situating Australian live streamers on the site – providing online communities particularly valued by fellow Australians, while also pursuing Twitch's norms for desirable communities more generally.

Culture

Having now examined what our respondents had to say about the communities around Australian live streamers, we turn now to the survey responses coded as being instead about culture. Australian respondents described a wide range of appealing cultural factors that contributed to their enjoyment of watching Australian live streamers. One listed several, for example, including ‘accent, conversation topics, similar humour, supporting national creators, [and] seeing what other parts of the country is like’, but most respondents focused on specific cultural elements which appealed to them. Of particular importance was belonging, with respondents writing that watching Australian live streamers ‘creates a more familiar environment where I already have some level of cultural similarities to others around’; that ‘being able to relate to more cultural aspects is very appealing’; that ‘having a good understanding of Australian culture helps me enjoy the Aussie streamers’; that ‘watching Australian streamers gives me a sense of natural belonging that being in non-Australian streamers don't have’; that ‘having Australian slang and cultural references is fun too, being able to take the piss out of other states and towns and cop the same in return is fun’; and that with many viewers in an Australian streamer's channel being Australian, ‘we have many shared experiences to bond over, not only with the streamer but other viewers as well’. Other respondents mentioned ‘accent and relatableness’, that streamers ‘have a lot of the same humour as me and the accents is comforting’, that they ‘usually hav[e] a similar culture to make references to’, that ‘similar humour and views of mateship make it easy to chill and watch’, and that ‘it's easy to relate to people of the same culture, but also for getting to know people that you may meet in real life at events or meet-ups somewhere in the future’.

In turn, other Australian viewers specifically positioned this feeling of belonging as a counterpoint to the North American dominance of Twitch as a platform. Such respondents wrote that ‘just the fact that they are from Australia is nice because it's a little slice of my own country in an industry that is largely made up of US streamers’; another wrote that they enjoy the ‘stylistic difference in Australian streamers compared to international (especially American)’ streamers; and another described how some Australian streamers would actually play into this, where ‘sometimes the streamer will have a go at chat and then chat will start getting fired up (e.g. how Americans say various words that us Aussies say properly – colour vs color and how Americans say aluminum, for example)’. Many Australian viewers also in turn expressed how important it was, for them, to support Australian live streamers rather than those from other countries. Respondents wrote that ‘online it used to be hard to find other Australians’ and so ‘finding other Aussies now I want to support them’; another wrote that ‘supporting Australian talent and influence in the global community is exciting’; another told us how they ‘enjoy being able to talk about things relevant to Australia without having to explain background information’; and another wrote that ‘it's fun to be able to support other Australian streamers because they're all part of the Australian streaming landscape’. Of particular note is a respondent who gave slightly more detail on this point, writing that ‘I find that connecting with Australian streamers brings me some pride, especially since in the grand scheme of the streaming scene, not a lot of decently sized streamers are Australian’.

These comments can be understood by taking a broader perspective on Australian media, beyond gaming specifically. It is perhaps unsurprising that Australian stream viewers might perceive Australia's presence on the international streaming stage as minor – and hence something to support – considering the historically similar situation in non-digital entertainment media. Australia's national entertainment industries have long had to contend with markets being dominated by American media (Crane, 2014). The evolution of digital and internet technologies has in turn caused broadcast industries worldwide to shift away from national focus towards multi-national logics under which ‘meaningful cultural specificity’ is discouraged (Chalaby, 2005; Lotz and Potter, 2022), and Americanised media becomes the norm. Hence on Twitch, as elsewhere, familiar cultural signifiers such as cultural references, invocations of an Australian everyday lifestyle, and even the recognisable Australian accent, create a familiar and highly relatable entertainment experience for Australians. This leads to what Vorderer and Hartman (2009: 540) have called the ‘pleasure of comprehension’ for an audience (cf. Baek, 2015), in this case enabling these Australian live streamers to – for their compatriot viewers – stand out against the ‘hegemony of placelessness’ of globalised markets (Lotz and Potter, 2022) such as Twitch. Although live streaming is both Internet- and platform-dependent, and thus subject to a global audience and influenced by the norms of its owning company's country by default, the centralisation and searchability of streaming platforms makes it possible, and even easy, to locate Australian stream content and enjoy that sense of familiarity and presence alongside fellow Australians. For the Australian viewer, our data therefore shows that being able to hear an Australian streamer hold authentic Australian conversations about recognisable, everyday aspects of Australian culture and lifestyle comes as a welcome surprise, potentially also contrasting how they might expect to see Australia presented in global media.

Non-Australian viewers, by contrast, expressed three different culture-related reasons for wanting to watch Australian live streamers. These were an appreciation of the cultural differences between themselves and Australian live streamers and an eagerness to learn about Australia through these broadcasts; a sense of personal connection to Australia which these streams helped to meet; and a widespread appreciation of the Australian accent. In the first case, respondents told us that they enjoyed Australian streamers because they talk ‘about life in Australia that might be different than what others might experience’, and that ‘as an American, Australian streamers have a different sort of personality and culture’ which is ‘appealing due to its uniqueness’. Others gave similar thoughts, writing that they enjoyed the ‘the cultural differences’ of an Australian streamer; they had a ‘a general affection’ for Australia as having ‘the slight exoticness of a different, but majority English-speaking, nation’; they had an appreciation for the ‘fun cultural references’ of Australian streamers which made it ‘very interesting to discuss differences on stream’; that they ‘enjoy the cultural references and learning about any differences in their day to day life versus my own’; and that there is ‘enough common ground in shared interests and references to flow easily but also different enough to be new and engaging’. As a result, many expressed a keenness to learn about Australia. Respondents said that ‘it's fun learning about Australian culture’ in the channels they watch; that ‘learning about Australian culture etc has been enjoyable’ on Twitch; that they appreciate a ‘unique culture that differentiates Australian streamers from others’; they ‘enjoy the cultural references’ on Australian Twitch channels; and that they ‘learned a lot about Australia’ through watching the stream, which they described as ‘a country I previously knew nearly nothing about other than the stereotypes’.

These are interesting comments when we consider perceptions of Australians in other English-speaking countries. On the one hand, popular perception of Australians has long been dominated by the archetypal figure of the ‘ocker’. International comprehensions of the ocker are exemplified by Paul Hogan's eponymous character in the 1986 film Crocodile Dundee: a rugged, rural working-class (white) man with a broad accent and a brazen, laconic, jokesterish personality. Hogan's character, despite being tailored towards international appeal (McCallum, 1998), represented a shift in how the ocker – the mythic ‘typical Australian’ – could be viewed, away from an object of some mockery to something much more likeable (Arrow, 2009). This has, over time, nevertheless led to a desire amongst many Australians to distance or diversify the overseas image from that of the Paul-Hogan-style ocker (Bryant, 2013), however positively received. Yet the image remains extensively utilised as a cultural export to sell beer, tourism, and the country as a whole (Fiske et al., 1987) and is regularly reinforced by marketing and popular media (Turner, 1994) – despite this idea standing greatly at odds with the multi-cultural and overwhelmingly urban reality of present-day Australia (Robinson, 2011). At the same time, however, imaginaries which emphasise the country's leisure opportunities – the proverbial ‘sun, sea and sand’ (Brien, 2021) – are likewise dominant ideas associated globally with Australia. These also include Australia's distinctive wildlife, including the large number of dangerous spiders and snakes, as well as high temperatures and beaches (Szele and Klosi, 2023), while the 2000 Olympics showcased to the wider world a side of Australia unlike the exotic outback – which is to say, urbanised and polished. As Baek (2015: 733) notes, in cross-cultural media consumption audiences enjoy both ‘culturally similar foreign entertainment’ when easy to understand, but also enjoy ‘culturally different foreign entertainment’ as long as unfamiliar or alien elements are challenging, but comprehensible. Australian live streamers speak English and are familiar with many of the cultural elements live stream viewers from around the world know, yet these channels also present novelty and a connection to a very different country. Both of these dynamics seem to be at play here.

Some also wrote about stronger and more direct personal connections to Australia. One respondent told us that ‘I have a lot of family in Australia and New Zealand’ and so it's ‘nice to see the streamers and the culture that they represent as a way to know a bit more of the actual people rather than just my family and Australian news’. Another wrote that they ‘visited Australia several years ago [and] loved my time there’, and so watching Australian streamers ‘gives me nice reminders of my time there’. A third wrote that they’ve ‘always had an interest in Australia and New Zealand culture’ and ‘studying Australian wildlife has shaped my interests and me as a person’, before adding they’ve ‘always wanted to visit Oceania but never had the opportunity to travel’, but communicating ‘with people and making friends with a community on the over side of the planet has been [a] fantastic experience’. Another wrote, similarly, that ‘Australia has always been a place that I would like to visit’ and that ‘I do have extended family in Australia but I am not in contact with them’. This data then shows that Twitch also serves as a way to continue a pre-existing connection to Australia while living elsewhere, or to begin forging connections a viewer intends to follow up with offline travel. These respondents are already familiar with Australia, but use Twitch's (and more broadly the internet's) ability for immediate global communication to immerse themselves more fully in a national culture they regard very positively. Just as the literature, television and music of a nation can serve a similar global role, our data shows for the first time that live streaming can also perform this same function, and certainly merits further study in this regard.

Lastly on culture, we also found many non-Australian respondents highlighting Australian accents as a key appeal of Australian live streamers. These comments included ‘I really enjoy the accents and how they talk’, ‘the accent is charming’, ‘I like the accent’, ‘the accent helps’, ‘their particular Australian accent is just really nice’, and that their ‘very unique accent’ is ‘easy to pick out, and it makes the stream more enjoyable’. Both within and outside of Australia, the use of Australian English is often considered the most important marker of Australian identity (Moore, 2008), and varieties of Australian accent are comparatively homogeneous when considered alongside the ranges found in the United Kingdom or the United States (Siegel, 2021). Until the mid-twentieth century, the Australian way of speaking was evaluated by British academics with (unfavourable) comparisons to Cockney, with ‘lazy’ or ‘drawling’ sounds being equated with a sort of ‘avowedly working-class’ boorishness (Damousi, 2007; Mahoney, 1999: 131). Yet the use of Australian English has also been described as ‘democratic, matey, intimate and informal’ (Davies, 2017: 20), or as evocative of ‘toughness, egalitarianism, materialism and practicality’ (Pear, cited in Mahoney, 1999: 131), all of which are easy to see as positive and indeed socially attractive traits. It is thus particularly in these latter associations that we may well find some of the appeal of the Australian accent amongst live streaming viewers – many viewers form quite strong bonds of association with the streamers they watch (Kowert and Daniel, 2021; McLaughlin and Wohn, 2021) and so an accent associated with being ‘matey’ or ‘informal’ would be likely to have a wide appeal. Far from accents potentially turning off viewers for being difficult to understand, we instead see the Australian accent being an unintentional, although beneficial for Australian live streamers, attraction of their channels. This thus makes Twitch a rare location where a global audience can consume a natural Australian accent, unlike – for example – many successful Australian actors who largely overwrite their accent in pursuit of global viability.

Attitude

Having examined respondent comments about community and culture, we come now to our third major code – attitude. Comments on the attitudes and behaviours of Australians streamers came mostly from non-Australian viewers, who addressed attitude in three main ways: perceptions that Australian streamers are particularly friendly, particularly relaxed, and particularly funny. In the first case, these respondents wrote that they ‘find Australians to be generally friendly and happy-go-lucky people’; that their ‘voice and personality are fun to watch’; they’re ‘very kind and friendly’; they’re ‘very nice people – very welcoming and friendly’; that Australians have a ‘certain unflappable quality without losing sociability’ which ‘makes you feel like “Yeah, if I met them while having a walkabout I'd buy them a pint”’; and that Australian streamers ‘tend to have some of the nicest personalities’ you can find on Twitch. Others offered explicit comparisons, stating that Australian streamers are ‘less toxic and more empathetic’ than American streamers, or that ‘Australian streamers seem more likeable, funny, and intelligent compared to other streamers’, or that ‘I’ve found the Aussie streamers [are] a lot nicer than the majority of NA/EU streamers I’ve met’. ² Szele and Klosi (2023) note that Australians are indeed often regarded abroad as friendly and engaging, and at a moment when discussion around toxicity in live streams is prominent (Consalvo, 2018; Kim et al., 2022; Meisner, 2023), is it thus easy to see why this is such an appealing trait of Australian live streamers. Moving beyond the comfort described earlier in forging feelings of friendship with a live streamer, this data also positions Australian streamers in contrast to the mainstream on Twitch, and a mainstream which tends to prioritise competitive and sometimes aggressive (Mihailova, 2022), often exaggeratedly masculine (Ruberg et al., 2019; Welch, 2022), and generally related to ‘hardcore’ gaming (Ruberg and Lark, 2021), forms of presentation.

Both non-Australian (and this time Australian as well) respondents also stressed that Australian live streams were relaxing places. Non-Australian respondents wrote that they ‘enjoy the laid-back atmosphere’, while another wrote that Australians offer ‘mostly chill vibed streams’. Other respondents suggested that a particular Australian streamer's ‘chill, friendly and open-minded nature is probably linked to him growing up in the laid back Australian culture’; that ‘Australian streamers don't exaggerate or speak chaotically’ and ‘tend to be much calmer than streamers from other nationalities’; and that Australian streamers are ‘just really chill people’ which makes the stream ‘a nice relaxing environment to be in’. Australian viewers agreed, writing that ‘Aussie streamers seem to be a lot more chill, laid back and accepting’ compared to other streamers who can be ‘a little intense’; another called them ‘easy to chill and watch’ with; and another wrote that the Australian streamers they watch ‘are more relaxed about streaming and more personable in general’. A global notion of Australians as laid-back has existed since at least the early twentieth century, and not always in a positive sense. To some, both in Australia and abroad, Australia was conceptualised as ‘the lucky country’, whose people coasted off its natural resources and were thus complacent, second-rate, and entitled (Blackburn, 1999; Horne, 1968). This association of Australia with relaxation and nonchalance has often centred on the local cultural concept of the ‘larrikin’, a coarse though good-hearted social rogue. As Bellanta (2012: xii) writes, to be a larrikin ‘is to be skeptical and irreverent, to knock authority and mock pomposity’ and offer a ‘disrespect’ for social norms. We see these associations coming through clearly in what these respondents had to say about the Australian streamers they watched, while they also stand in clear contrast to many of the dominant behaviours on Twitch more broadly. Many live streamers evince distinctly neoliberal and entrepreneurial mindsets on Twitch (Johnson, 2024; Johnson and Woodcock, 2017), including pursuing ‘over-the-top’ actions to gain attention or notoriety (Bedingfield, 2023). Our respondents’ comments thus demonstrate that significant counter-movements and counter-interests exist on Twitch, with many viewers seeking the things that Australian streamers, unlike many others, seem to exemplify (cf. Youngblood, 2022).

The third key cultural appeal highlighted by non-Australian respondents was humour. Respondents wrote that they ‘really love the sense of humor and mentality of ANZ streamers’; that Australian streamers are ‘just naturally funny’; that Australians have ‘an amazing sense of humour’; that ‘Aussie humor and wit is something that I really like’; and ‘Australian humour is the main draw to these streamers’. Others described the precise nature of this attractive comic style. One respondent said ‘often Aus streamers are into a bit of banter, which I appreciate’, while another wrote that Australian streamers offer ‘sarcasm and satire’. Others claimed that Australian streamers ‘are more crass and willing to say things which other streamers shy away from’ which leads ‘to them being funnier’, while another wrote that Australian live streamers ‘get away with much more than I feel the Brits and Americans do’. One respondent wrote that ‘Australian streamers are less worried about saying curse words such as cunt, bastard, etc’ – framing this as a significant plus – while others wrote that they ‘love the Australian banter’, or that ‘the uniquely Australian […] vernacular is a large portion of entertainment value’. Respondents also told us that “Australian humor and phrases are very entertaining and come across as much more genuine than other ways of speaking’, and praised their ‘attitude and willingness to say what they want to say and not fear it's going to hurt someone else's feelings’. Others wrote that ‘Australian streamers just say what comes to mind, regardless’, and that ‘Australians seem more unfiltered and open about their opinions’. Finally – noting again this combination of silliness and seriousness – one respondent wrote a longer answer, explaining that with Australian live streamers they ‘appreciate that we as viewers can joke around about being upside down or riding kangaroos, while also having serious and meaningful conversations about the social and political climate and Australia's position in the world’.

These comments can be well understood through scholarship on Australian humour and its broader position within an international or global context. The ‘distinctive style, vocabulary and pronunciation of Australian English’ is seen as important to Australian humour (Davies, 2017: 20), and here we see these same elements being articulated as important to viewers watching Australian live streamers. While humour has been previously noted as essential to Twitch streamers (Johnson, 2022), this is the first time that a national dimension to this – at least in the perception of viewers – has been identified in research. Yet there is more to be understood here when we consider the particular registers of Australian humour. This style of humour – ‘dry, full of extremes, anti-authoritarian, self-mocking and ironic’ (Rolfe, 2022: 52), or ‘laconic, self-mocking, cynical and irreverent’ (McCallum, 1998: 204) – is ‘closely bound up with a concept of the Australian character as egalitarian, anti-authoritarian and irreverent towards social pretension’ (Jones, 1988: 82). These are, again, valuable ways to appear on Twitch, given the closeness that viewers want to feel with their streamers – no matter how large or successful their channel – and the central appeal of humour more generally. In turn, authenticity is seen as a highly desirable trait for a live streamer to possess (Lamerichs, 2021; Lark, 2022; Welch, 2022). Australian vernacular, mannerisms and humour, all contrast the generally understood pressure to act as American as possible on Twitch for the sake of mass appeal. Our data shows these traits thus make an Australian live streamer appear much more authentic than others, and perhaps less concerned with the celebrity, fame, and wealth that can come along with a successful live streaming career. Of note here is the work of Smith and Phillips (cited in Turnbull, 2008: 17), who argue that media consumption can allow people to ‘feel themselves to be national but in a more inclusive, multicultural and boundary-open way’. Live streaming audiences are international by virtue of existing on international digital platforms, and in this regard it is not just the Australian-ness of these live streamers which matters, but the non-Australian-ness of so many of their viewers. These channels highlight and foreground the appeal of Australia, Australians, and especially it seems Australian wit, but do so in a way that also enables non-Australian viewers to observe and frame the differences with their own worlds, offering partial consumption of the other in a very safe and generally inclusive setting. In this way, once again, we see how the behaviours and presentations of the Australian live streamer intersect with Twitch's norms in novel ways, enabling these individuals to carve out a distinctive niche on the site.

We can also usefully see our findings as a case study of a particular localism resisting, at least in part, the norms and defaults of a larger and globalised digital culture. Gaming is the main thing watched on Twitch, and scholars have noted many local specificities to how games are shared and enjoyed (e.g. Jin, 2010). This often includes cross-geographical gaming practices, such as perhaps American World of Warcraft players who pay Chinese ‘gold farmers’ to generate in-game money for their characters (Heeks, 2009; Nardi and Kow, 2010), or Russian-speaking and English-speaking players within the same server of EVE Online attempting to communicate with each in real time to prevent an in-game war or diplomatic incident (Carter, 2015; Goodfellow, 2016), or fans undertaking the labour of translating Japanese games into English for a very committed global audience (Consalvo, 2013; Mangiron, 2018). In the case of Twitch's Australian live streamers, then, we see a novel and emerging cross-geographical gaming phenomenon, where viewers from around the world are discovering, and evidently enjoying, their time spent with specifically Australian live streamers – who seem to have come to represent something distinct. The display of ‘Australiana’, such as a distinctive accent, set of cultural references, or behaviour and language, is clearly attractive to many of Twitch's viewers. Its appeal seems to lie both in its specifics, as we have explored in this article, but also in its unambiguous articulation of difference from the global norm on Twitch, and within a lot of live streaming in general. This is not, of course, to suggest that there are no Australian live streamers who follow the North American model, as they certainly exist, but rather to note the emergence of a specific stratum of Twitch streamers who are increasingly defined by this nationality, their traits which are understood as defining that nationality, and how those same traits signal difference from the norm. Amongst Australian streamers and their viewers on Twitch we therefore see a ‘social localism’ on the site forming around those broadcasting from a ‘spatial localism’ (Ali, 2016: 107). This shows us that although Twitch is a vast and multi-million streamer platform, it has not – yet – become a monoculture, and indeed how that same size allows for significant variety. Not all viewers are looking for the same thing, and many are looking for what they feel Australian streamers offer, rather than their apparently more competitive, or more aggressive, or less humorous, counterparts.

Conclusion

In this paper we have analysed how Australian nationality, identity, and presentation, tie into viewer decision-making on leading live streaming site Twitch. In doing so we identified a number of ways that the Australian-ness of Australian live streamers is understood by their viewers, actively pursued by viewers from Australia and abroad, and both connects with and challenges a number of live streaming norms in distinctive ways. Specifically, we found three main categories of responses that defined for us the appeal of the live streams of Australian broadcasters – the communities that form around these streamers, the Australian culture on display in these channels, and the attitudes of these live streamers. In the first case Australian viewers reported a keen interest in being part of communities with other Australians on Twitch, although non-Australian viewers did not report that same desire – despite the overall highly positive appraisal of Australia and Australians that the rest of our survey data demonstrated. Instead, these respondents largely wrote what dedicated Twitch viewers tend to write about Twitch communities in general, demonstrating that they see nothing distinctive in those Australia-based communities – but still get as much out of them as they would from Twitch communities whose streamers live elsewhere on the globe. In the second case we found that both Australian and non-Australian viewers are equally attracted to the distinct cultures of these channels, but where Australian viewers were seeking familiarity, comfort, and predictability, non-Australian viewers were seeking unusualness, difference, and connection to a foreign land – yet both had these desires met by the channels of Australian live streamers. In the third case we again found shared appreciation for the attitude of these streamers, but this time both groups of viewers agreed on the appeal – arguing that Australian live streamers are friendly, relaxed, and funny, and often in ways that run counter to the dominant discourses or behaviours on Twitch. Taken together these findings demonstrate that national identity, how it comes across on Twitch, and preformed conceptions and understandings of national character as well as actual national character – insofar as such a thing exists – all come together to mark Australian live streamers out on the site as both highly distinctive, and for many viewers, highly appealing.

This contributes to our understanding of Twitch and live streaming, but also to our understanding of how Australia and Australians are received and understood within online, digital, and gaming communities, which stretch across the globe. Just as Australia has been noted by other games researchers as ‘an ideal case study through which to [further] understandings of localized videogame making activity’ (Keogh, 2021: 119), we can now propose Australia as an excellent case study for studying localised game streaming and game stream viewing activity, as well. Many of the appeals of these live streamers are connected to their being specifically Australian, yet many other appeals simply emerge from ways that Australian live streamers appear to differ from most live streamers – being more relaxed, less toxic, having a robust sense of humour, and so forth. Regardless of the reason, however, what is clear is that Australian live streamers have carved out a distinctive presence on Twitch, and many viewers are attracted to the set of characteristics they offer. Further research should turn to focusing on Australian live streamers themselves, since these individuals are rapidly becoming some of the most globally visible Australian media personalities – especially important when we note that they maintain a lot of Australian associations in a way professional actors, for example, rarely do. Equally, comparisons with other countries will help us to further situate these national cultures on Twitch, and further frame and contextualise the impact, and limitations, of the sites dominant American culture. Hjorth and Chan (2009: 11) stress the value in studying ‘regional-specific forms of media literacy, creativity, intimacy and labor’, and this paper has demonstrated the importance of addressing these in the live streaming context. Scholarship on live streaming is dominated by the North American context, and to a lesser extent the mainland Chinese context, and thus studies of other nationalities – their broadcasters, viewers, communities, cultures, and everything else – shows us key counter-currents on these sites and their users, as well as the global perceptions of the nationalities and cultures building digital fame and digital sociality on such platforms. Expanding live streaming scholarship into other countries, and other languages as well, will thus be very valuable interventions. Doing both of these will deepen our understanding of the experiences of Australians on Twitch, and help us to understand more broadly how live streamers from countries outside the dominant American context on Twitch find success, and visibility, in the era of live streaming.