Twitch and emotes : A study on the utilization of graphicons in synchronous environments

Abstract: This thesis explores the use of emotes in a synchronous environment where hundreds to thousands of people communicate with each other in different discourse communities. The thesis performs a study on emote use based on the frequencies they are used and their different CMC features in these communities to acquire knowledge on the contextual basis of emote use in synchronous environments. By using various corpus tools and implementing both a quantitative analysis and qualitative analysis, the results show that the frequency of messages that use emotes varies based on the discourse community that is involved in the use of the emotes. The different CMC features are covered by the basis of the discourse community’s behavior, where there is also some involvement based on the size of the different discourse communities on Twitch.