Online harassment has existed since the dawn of online communities
and it is known that women and LGBTQ people are marginalized groups
that experience harassment both on and offline
In our study we look to these two groups and their harassment experiences
within the context of live streaming on Twitch
While harassment has been studied throughout various social media contexts
live streaming brings unique attributes to the table that
potentially increase vulnerability to these groups
We identified five types of harassment through the experiences of our 25 participants
First we found our participants experienced sexual harassment
through lewd comments sexual solicitation and sexual images
A notable finding here was how participants noted receiving
sexual imagery outside of the Twitch platform and it is the Twitch panel system social media
aggregation that Twitch encourages which allows viewers to easily access streamers in this way
The second type of harassment we found was hate speech related to racism,
sexism, homophobia and transphobia Participants noted how despite being
able to blacklist racist words through the platform many viewers would circumvent this
Also feminist talk shows and streamers public about their sexualities using the LGBTQ tag
were specifically and easily targeted by sexist and homophobic perpetrators
Furthermore a trans participant also noted how
her voice was a targeted aspect that transphobic viewers would comment on
Some participants also had viewers who cross boundaries by putting out private information,
becoming obsessive towards them, and also one participant detailed how a viewer stalked them
and located and visited their place of work
Participants also talked about how their visual presentation
left them vulnerable for attacks and comments towards their appearances
And lastly, participants experienced backseating which is when viewers
make rudely critical comments regarding the streamer's actions in real time
Live streaming enables streamers to self-moderate their communities and so we also delved into the
methods of how streamers manage their communities from a social perspective as well as
a technical perspective Their moderation tactics.
We identified eight types of coping mechanisms and strategies.
Within emotional management, participants used coping mechanisms such as venting to close ones,
going to therapy or releasing their emotions alone by crying
and some streamers found benefit in stepping away and simply taking a break
Also some streamers coped by entertaining themselves like
using humor to counter the harassers. P12 for instance explained how often
times ignoring trolls will get them to go away because trolls are driven by reactions
Conversely, participants also said they coped
by calling out the harassment to counter situations like stalking and doxxing
As mentioned in RQ1, some participants explained how they took careful precautions
with their privacy and how they present themselves online
Through moderation, participants utilized first party Twitch tools like Twitch auto
mod which is designed to detect and filter out risky words and messages
However participants also said that auto mod was sometimes too restrictive
and so many participants preferred also utilizing third party bots, like Nightbot
These bots work in similar ways but are more customizable and preferred by participants
while the specific types of harassment in our results are not novel what is novel about them
is how we explore the affordances and platform design of live streaming
and how they may facilitate and amplify certain harassment
Streamers broadcast themselves live by sharing video and audio while
their viewers interact through a text-based chat. This shows imbalance between streamers and viewers
Furthermore while there are other platforms that utilize audio and video sharing,
the key factor here is that live streams, as the name implies, are broadcasting in real time
therefore the reactions and coping strategies are forced to be used in real time as well
Coping mechanisms our participants displayed aligned with previous
research regarding workplace harassment. Our participants similarly either ignored
issues, seeked advocacy, relied on governance mechanisms of the platform,
and socially coped by communicating with a support circle as well as confronted harassers.
However while platform governance mechanisms are applied it may be insufficient and could
be improved to help moderate harassment, especially towards women and LGBTQ people
Furthermore moderation and coping with harassment especially in front of a live camera requires a
lot of emotional investment from streamers. This exhaustion of emotional energy happens
regardless of available moderation technologies or even having other human moderators
Overall we found that technological strategies like using bots in moderation can cover the
basics for handling negativity but there are also emotional and relational factors that play
into moderation, community maintenance and self-care when it comes to being
a woman or LGBTQ person in the streaming space