“A Really Good Network of People”: Knowledge Sharing and Community Amongst Twitch Live Streamers

Abstract

This paper examines the media production culture on live streaming site Twitch, where creative workers—the live streamers—are not employed by the platform. Drawing on data from interviews with successful live streamers, we outline how these broadcasters exchange and share knowledge with each other through both informal and formal channels, and the significant cultural importance assigned to being willing to support other streamers. We show that supporting others is not just an expected cultural practice but also something beneficial to the streamers offering the advice, and thus furthers both ethical and self-interested goals. By analyzing these dynamics, we shed light on a novel online culture of content creation, and in doing so contribute to scholarship on Twitch and live streaming specifically, and to our understanding of production cultures and practices surrounding digital media more broadly.

Introduction

Most major video on demand (VOD) streaming services employ hundreds or thousands of creatives and professionals. Alongside creating in-house programming, these workers also secure arrangements and deals for external “content” (Idiz 2024; Idiz and Poell 2025), utilize and create highly secretive algorithmic systems with which to target audiences (Rasmussen 2025), “classify” and quantify cultural content (Floegel 2020), and attempt to gain advantage over the growing number of streaming services now competing for consumer attention in the so-called “streaming wars” (Grimes 2024). However, leading live streaming platform Twitch pursues a very different business model, with only a relative handful of true employees and most of its creative “workers” acting as independent contractors using the platform to generate content and income. Most of these live streamers broadcast video game content (Johnson 2024; Taylor 2018), and unlike on-demand streaming, viewers converse live with the streamer through a text-based chat. Little, however, is known about how streamers interact with other streamers, and how this shapes and informs the content produced on the site. These all mark striking differences between on-demand streaming and live streaming in the professional dynamics of content production (and consumption), and consequently pose questions about what norms and cultural behaviors might exist here as opposed to on-demand streaming services. With such a decentralized model of cultural production, and millions of broadcasters and viewers collaboratively taking part in that production, what sorts of distinctive production cultures have emerged?

In this article, we interrogate the content production culture of live streamers on Twitch: specifically, their novel dynamics of knowledge exchange and community support. Drawing on data from semi-structured interviews with successful live streamers, we outline how these workers go about exchanging knowledge and know-how with each other through both informal and formal channels, as well as how diverse social and interpersonal connections provide support to Twitch streamers. Through these discussions, the paper argues that live streamers do not see their cultural production work as zero-sum in nature, nor performed to support a corporation, but rather believe that by aiding and bolstering other streamers, their own channels and aspirations are also improved and strengthened. Supporting others also meets the widely-held norms of what acceptable streamer behavior is, and enables streamers to forge and grow bonds with others pursuing the practice. Our key finding is that these dynamics of community knowledge exchange hence allow streamers to pursue both ethical and personal goals (connection with peers, supporting friends, etc) and strategic and self-interest goals (growing one’s own channel) at the same time. The live streaming production culture is thus distinct from in-demand streaming services, ¹ and the paper consequently contributes to our understanding of production cultures for online video, highlighting a novel case study that stands in striking contrast to Netflix, Disney+, Apple TV, and the like. Such an enquiry enhances our understanding of all screen production cultures as new forms of cultural production emerge within the online screen industry, exhibiting both commonalities and contrasts with that which already exists. Bringing the idea of production cultures (Caldwell 2008) to live streaming hence enables us to step further behind the curtain of live streaming, and to understand the rituals and narratives that shape the lives of these creative workers.

Methodology

This article draws from nineteen semi-structured interviews with Australian live streamers on Twitch. We prioritized candidates who were active and had higher average viewer counts amongst potential streamers identified for interview, to gain as clear a picture of experienced live streamer practices and culture as possible. Candidates were identified via a combination of Twitch’s “live channels” browsing function, the third-party tool SullyGnome, and by checking publicly-visible follower lists of known streamers who met our requirements. Streamers were contacted by email or via social media sites, and interviews with those interested in the project lasted between 30 and 65 minutes. Participants were asked open-ended questions, with additional follow-up questions asked to clarify notable or significant responses. Ethics clearance was granted by the University of Sydney Human Research Ethics Committees, with code 2021/488. Once the interviews were transcribed, coding began by seeking key words or phrases that occurred regularly (in line with Chametzky 2016), with codes then compared across interviews to identify a “provisional idea of emergent themes” (Deterding and Waters 2021, 726). Given the reciprocal relationship between coding and analysis (Weston et al. 2001), these initial observations suggested other elements to look for in the interviews, which then yielded subsequent codes. Over several passes, clear thematic elements emerged, with many interviewees regularly describing similar topics and practices of knowledge sharing. These two key axes for understanding what live streamers are doing form the foundation for the following discussion, in which all respondents have been granted pseudonyms.

What is Shared?

To begin with, many of our respondents identified live streaming strategy as a key aspect of sharing insights and knowledge. Ariel, for example, listed “ideas for streams” and “games to play” as important strategic discussions live streamers have amongst themselves, with ideas being “shared communally” amongst practitioners. Meanwhile, Nicoli said that many streamers “tend to message” others for “tips and tricks on how to grow as a streamer, or how to expand your network” with both streamers and brands. Both VOD and live streaming services are essentially the gatekeepers of their own data, which is often proprietary and closely guarded, and this is one of the reasons why live streaming cultural producers share information of this sort. Specifically, our interviewees had experiences of being on both sides of these dynamics. In the first case, several said they actively supported other broadcasters: Veronica described helping other streamers by discussing “what they want to do next with their stream, and what to do with their graphics, what to do with a sub-a-thon, what kind of goals they want to set, [and] sponsorship opportunities,” while Roland mentioned exchanging knowledge with other streamers about “how to get sponsors, how to do stuff” and “how to get a bigger revenue share from Twitch,” which they called “hush-hush knowledge.” Some, in turn, were helped by other streamers: Milano described a “very, very helpful” colleague who was a repository of “good knowledge” about “sponsorship” and “how to partner with companies,” bringing “a lot of good insider information” that many streamers do not have. Veronica similarly recounted the value of strategic “talks with some streamers [about] what games [I should] be playing next.” Just as independent producers of VOD content perform “aspirational work” (Szczepanik 2024, 232) to align their strategic thinking with the platformized possibilities of imagined success, similar dynamics are also manifesting here: being clear on one’s objectives and finding the community-led guidance to pursue it.

Emotional support and mental health support, however, were found to be just as important as streaming strategy for sharing and mutual assistance. Bethany, for example, explained how there are “often personal life and mental health things” live streamers face, exacerbated by a perception that “it’s really hard to complain to non-streamers about being stressed,” since even one’s fans will dismiss this as “oh, it must be so hard to play videogames all day, oh woe is me!” Selenna said many streamer-streamer interactions involve “support for each other in the whole streaming experience,” and that it is “quite intense and personal to put yourself out there” on a site like Twitch, which means only other streamers can “empathize” and “give advice and support.” Jacinda echoed this, stating “a lot of people don’t understand streaming stuff unless they’re also a streamer,” and so “we gravitate towards other streamers because they understand.” Milano said it was important to be “able to socialise” and meet others who “are content creators, that can relate to you,” and Scarlet similarly said many people will reach out “streamer to streamer” to have “a chat about the positives and negatives that you experience with streaming,” and that they in particular were “vocal” about mental health during such discussions. Bruce, lastly, told us about a moment when they had reached out for help to a “streamer acquaintance [who is] a lovely person” about a stressful situation they had never experienced before and had received “an exceptional message with a lot of information,” for which they were “incredibly grateful.”

Live streaming seems on the surface like an easy job: one just sits in front of a camera and plays computer games (or does something else). Yet as our respondents noted, live streaming can be extremely demanding and strategically complex, and consequently comes with significant challenges to mental health and wellbeing. In the first publication on the topic of live streaming and mental health, it was noted that many streamers identify distinctive pressures from live streaming that might exacerbate or challenge mental health conditions, such as the need for constant sociality, or the difficulty of handling trolls and other abusive viewers (Johnson 2019). Subsequent work showed that an awareness of mental health is an essential part of understanding streamers’ orientations to their own subjectivities and behaviors on the platform (Gandhi et al. 2021; Uttarapong et al. 2022). Equally, the strategic demands, as well as the emotional and affective, cannot be overlooked. Streamers actively plan ways to promote and grow their channels (Johnson and Woodcock 2019) and figure out how to use their understanding of the most effective decisions on the platform, known as the “Twitch meta” (Consalvo et al. 2023; Harris 2022, 64), to their advantage. Where on-demand streaming industry “lore” is focused on what sorts of media content will be attractive to audiences (Burroughs 2019, 3), which is important here too, our data show that on Twitch, such discussions overlap with received wisdom about wellbeing and sustainable content production. There is more broadly an ongoing mental health crisis within media industries (Deuze 2025), and live streaming, it appears, is no exception. These elements thus emerge here as key points of streamer-streamer discussions, with both pragmatic and emotional aspects of live streaming’s demands being foregrounded by our interview data.

Another topic live streamers exchange knowledge on, and socialize around, is the technology and hardware used in live streaming. Veronica, for example, described having a “really good network of people” who helped “each other with technical issues,” which was common across many interviewees. Ariel, for example, said they learned how to use streaming technology through “jumping in the deep end” and “asking more experienced” streamers what they used; Selenna sought advice from streaming friends who “teach you these sorts of things” about hardware choices; Ian said most live streamers “have someone who’s very tech-savvy who they can rely on for help”; and Bruce explained how “issues” with their PC “crashing during streams” had been resolved by a friend who was a fellow streamer. More generally, Ian noted that many streamers take kindly to questions like “what are you streaming with?” or “what microphone do you use?” Many streamers also “list all of their gear in the bio of their stream” so others can see what they are using. Given how complex these elements can be, it is unsurprising that technical knowhow is an important element of what streamers exchange amongst themselves. Yet, with how strongly Twitch presents itself as a site where anyone can find success, it is telling that even now such technological knowledge needs existing streamers to support new streamers. The site’s promise of easy fame and easy leisure are undermined every time a live streamer reaches out to another to successfully stream, demonstrating the importance of this community to actually facilitating any kind of live streaming production on the site.

How Is It Shared?

Having now looked at the main forms of community knowledge exchange—(1) strategy, (2) emotional and mental support, and (3) technology—we now consider how this knowledge is actually shared. Many of our interviewees said that they were part of a live streaming group or team, somewhat like the multi-channel networks found on YouTube (Gardner and Lehnert 2016), and it became clear that these are essential for many streamers. Cossette said they ran a “stream team” designed to “coach” new streamers in “building up their brands”; Marissa said they had founded a stream team specifically for women playing a particular (very male-dominated) game series; and Steffan stated they were part of a group of streamers who are friends with a particular, larger and more influential streamer. Others told us that they were part of multiple groups. Jane said they were in two streaming groups, one “an official Twitch women’s group” and the other “a mental health group”; Jack said they had founded a stream team focused on Australia and New Zealand, and that they are also a member of the “Aussie Pride” stream team for LGBTQ+ broadcasters. Jacinda, meanwhile, went into some detail, telling us about their membership in the “Twitch Women’s Alliance” and two other groups that were for streamers broadcasting a particular game, one of which was specifically for women. They also noted that they had left another stream group when the two parties “went our separate ways,” being quick to stress “which is fine, you know—things happen,” without elaborating on specifics. Bruce described how they are part of a group that offers “a place where people can meet like-minded streamers” and “team up for collaborations,” which formed “a few years back after the collapse of a rather large streaming team in Australia.” These places and contexts thus facilitate what Bishop (2019) calls “algorithmic gossip,” by which they mean the circulation and discussion amongst creators of ideas and discoveries about effective means to secure visibility on a platform.

We also found that informal exchanges (Bishop 2019) are likewise of paramount importance beyond the formal structures of groups. Many of these take place during more general conversations with other streamers. For example, Crystal said that although streamers often interact with other streamers to “swap tips, give information,” many of these interactions are “honestly that we just play or stream together.” Selenna similarly asserted that although many conversations with other streamers are indeed about success and strategy on Twitch, others are just “about shows we like” or “something random” that might have happened on a stream. Scarlet likewise noted that they will often “go and hang out” in the streams of friends, for purely social purposes, and challenged the idea that this only happens for instrumental networking purposes. Nicoli also said many streamer-to-streamer contacts are indeed about help and assistance, but many others are simply along the lines of “hey, I want to be friends, do you guys want to hang out?” Roland described having “personal streamer friends” whose streams they often watch, and engage with in “small talk stuff,” and Milano described a lot of their interactions with other streamers as “playing games or just chilling.” What therefore emerges from this data is the ease with which “instrumental” discussions blur into general relaxed gaming and socializing for live streamers, and how general relaxed gaming and socializing in turn blur into instrumental discussions about live streaming. It is the same individuals who are exchanging knowledge who are forging friendships; it is the same people who hang out in others’ channels who might, at other times of the day, also be supporting those channels and the streamers who create them.

What all of this leads to, our respondents explained, is a striking culture of openness between live streamers, which was often identified as the key part of live streamer behavior and social norms. Milano told us that “everyone is so willingly open to shar[ing] their knowledge,” and “there’s no gatekeeping.” Killian similarly told us “people in the community [are] all pretty great with sharing information,” while Jack said “there isn’t any part of the content creation process that we safeguard to ourselves,” and that “content creators are genuinely really open to sharing that kind of knowledge with each other.” They added that, from their perspective, “there is no discernible reason why” another streamer “would be dishonest with you,” because “they’re not a stakeholder of the industry in the same way that a company is.” There is consequently a “massive culture of openness amongst live streamers when it comes to teaching each other things” and “sharing knowledge.” Ian, meanwhile, offered another explanation for these norms, arguing that “if everyone is helping everyone, then it helps the industry as a whole, and if we’re all making sure we’re not being underpaid, then it helps everyone out, because the baseline goes up.” Others gave more specifics: Marissa said they “always gladly share information,” and will “never hesitate to ask” others for knowledge, because a part of this aforementioned culture of “pretty open information sharing.” Bruce, in turn, expressed that such experiences of helping and being helped “have been really lovely,” and they consequently “like giving back” to their fellow broadcasters because “collaboration is better than being a lone island.”

We would consequently argue that all these quotes demonstrate two key things, both novel findings in our understanding of live streaming and live streamers. They show us how live streamers behave with each other, but also show how these behaviors have become “codified” into a set of rules and norms that frame how live streamers are supposed to behave. These norms drive how others should respond if you (as a new live streamer) reach out to them, as well as how you should respond if others streamers reach out to you for advice. In the data presented here, we have shown how live streamers extensively discuss strategy (see also Johnson and Woodcock 2019), mental health (Johnson 2019), and streaming hardware with each other, and that such conversations are facilitated by both formal and informal avenues. All of this, in turn, has evidently created a widely-held set of norms amongst live streamers about the ability and encouragement to ask others for help, and how they should behave when they are the ones being asked for assistance. There is a valuable comparison here with Bingham’s (2020, 269) study of a Twitch-related talk show and the “underlying set of common assumptions about how the [live] streaming industry should function” its guests described, which is to say, Twitch’s equivalent of the so-called “lore” found in on-demand streaming (Burroughs 2019). In Bingham’s study, too, streamers articulated a strong sense of community responsibility (Hamilton et al. 2014), but in a context of general advice given in a public forum. This is unlike specific advice given in private settings, which (as shown above) are also used by Twitch streamers for friendly interpersonal interactions. We thus see many different layers and contexts to these interactions and the (re)production of “good streamer” discourse, and the many different avenues through which live streaming’s norms of solidarity and support are negotiated and played out.

Yet, as a final point, we must note that a few interviewees described negative experiences with the Twitch streamer community. For example, Crystal characterized Twitch as a place of “exclusively nepotism,” where “you’ve got to know someone, to know someone, to know someone, to get you into somewhere.” Similarly, Cossette said that “a lot of streamers are closed off,” and streaming communities are “very tight-knit,” with “groups of friends that you can’t really break into.” Jane, meanwhile, stressed that they “try to help other streamers” because “there’s a big space on Twitch” for everyone to succeed, but added that such a perspective is “not common,” with many streamers instead electing to “hoard everything pretty close to their chest” in a “very competitive” manner. Competition between live streamers has been studied in the context of the “hypercompetitive and precarious conditions” (Harris 2022, 19) on the site, and what Partin (2019, 13) calls Twitch’s “cutthroat attentional economy” (cf. Wollborn et al. 2023). However, such scholarship emphasizes competition for content rather than competition between individuals. Yet, in a context and setting where interpersonal relationships appear to be paramount, as all our respondents agreed, it is therefore perhaps unsurprising that tensions between Twitch live streamers lack the “professional” veneer of conflict between two on-demand streaming sites, for example, and instead become much more individual and much more acutely felt. These alternative perspectives thus demonstrate that the Twitch community, as is the case on all platforms and amongst all content creators, is not a single monolith. Lobato and Lotz’s (2021, 90) description of how both “competition and noncompetition” can be seen in the behaviors and strategies of on-demand streaming services offers a useful comparison with individual live streamers. In this case, both elements appear to be present among different users, depending on their experiences on the platform. The present study does therefore show us that entrepreneurial motives amongst live streamers exist generally quite comfortably alongside collaboration and cooperation, but it also identifies an important counter-perspective, even if we presently lack enough data to fully unpack it. Understanding this point of divergence in opinions is therefore a key future research direction.

Conclusion

In this paper, we have presented data on the community knowledge-sharing dynamics present amongst live streamers on Twitch, highlighting the key points of information exchange, how these exchanges take place, and the emergence of norms to which live streamers are expected to adhere. Our respondent Selenna described all such interactions between Twitch streamers as “a bit of expanding knowledge, but also a bit of just light chatter.” This dual framing is one of the key findings of this article—the consistent interweaving between the casual and the relaxed, and the instrumental and the deliberate, in how live streamers interact with each other. Both strategic decisions and ethical norms manifest here amongst live streamers, marking out a clear point of distinction between live streaming and on-demand streaming sites. Both contexts are certainly characterized by entrepreneurialism and economic imperatives, but the former also includes deep senses of belonging, purpose, friendship, and cooperation, which would be often hard to locate in the corporate environments of these other services and platforms. The well-examined subjectification strategies of neoliberal capitalism are indeed turning live streamers into “companies of one” (Johnson and Woodcock 2019), yet the culture of Twitch as a platform enables powerful counter-forces to also exist. To conclude by quoting our respondent Milano: “the general rule of thumb when it comes to content creating [is]: if you never ask, then you will never know.” This is not just true for live streamers, of course, but also for researchers. Live streaming represents a highly distinct practical and cultural form of media product, and having now become well-established as a major new form of online video production and consumption, its creators merit our close attention.