The Social Contract of Live Streaming : A Case Study of Four Streams on Twitch.tv

Abstract: This thesis asks how unique and different communities are formed and facilitated on the live-streaming platform Twitch.tv. Twitch was chosen for its relevance to gaming culture as well as its higher number of users comparatively to its contemporaries. This was done by applying the Social Contract Theory, a philosophy based on the individual’s relationship with a governing state and why a person would choose to give up their freedom for safety. The philosophers Thomas Hobbes, John Locke and Jean Rousseau form the theoretical background, as well as influence the end results. The application of The Social Contract as an ideology by David Gauthier was also used as a tool to categorize and understand the complex relationships at play. For the study, a nethnographical approach was chosen, where we as researchers took a passive, observatory role by viewing four different variety gaming communities on Twitch, those being the streams of users xQcOW, CohhCarnage, 39daph and Forsen. While doing so we did not engage in chat, nor did we let our participants know of their participation in the study. An ethical evaluation was made around this fact and it was deemed ethical through a netnographic framework, produced by Robert V Kozinets. We immersed ourselves in the listed streams for two hours each during the month of May, while taking notes of the different interactions between the streamer and their community. This was done to give us the necessary data to determine the stream's explicit and implicit rules and how they are enforced, so that in the end we could categorize each community's unique Social Contract. This method was deemed a success after an analysis of the recorded data made it possible for us to define the Social Contracts at play in each of the communities, by viewing them through the philosophers’ different lenses as well as comparing them to one another. By doing so, it could be seen that all four of our streamers could be connected to Lockian theory, with their varying focus on cooperation and protection of property. Each community would also have differing relationships with their explicit and implicit rules, like CohhCarnage’s Hobbesian perspective on authority being valued highly comparatively to Forsen’s disregard for it. We believe that this method of research can be easily replicated by others, and that this research can support future endeavors in the fields of netnography, live-streaming communities and Social Contract Theory on Social Media platforms.