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Abstract

On Twitch.tv, the gaming-oriented live streaming platform, users interact by sharing and viewing gameplay and participating in live chats. Negativity in online gaming is often explored on a large scale using broad categories. This study offers a nuanced look at Twitch.tv communities dedicated to the Dark Souls game series to examine the descriptive and injunctive community norms surrounding both aggressive negativity and ambiguous negativity, which involves interactions where the valence is not obvious and must be interpreted based on community-specific meanings and rules. This study systematically analyzed excerpts of chats and stream recordings of 22 live streamed sessions. It found ambiguous negativity was prevalent in cases of cursing, game jargon, banter, spam, and sarcasm. Aggressive negativity was rare but manifested in exclusionary language and banter gone too far. The response of community members and collective acceptance or rejection of such negativity was not clearly defined.

Keywords

Gaming live streaming negativity online communities qualitative analysis Twitch.tv

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