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1. Harassment Experiences of Women and LGBTQ Live Streamers and How They Handled Negativity

   https://doi.org/10.1145/3452918.3458794  

   Uttarapong, Jirassaya; Cai, Jie; Wohn, Donghee Yvette (June 2021, IMX '21: ACM International Conference on Interactive Media Experiences)

   null (Ed.)

   Live streaming is a form of interactive media that potentially makes streamers more vulnerable to harassment due to the unique attributes of the technology that facilitates enhanced information sharing via video and audio. In this study, we document the harassment experiences of 25 live streamers on Twitch from underrepresented groups including women and/or LGBTQ streamers and investigate how they handle and prevent adversity. In particular, live streaming enables streamers to self-moderate their communities, so we delve into the methods of how they manage their communities from both a social and technical perspective. We found that technology can cover the basics for handling negativity, but much emotional and relational work is invested in moderation, community maintenance, and self-care. 

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2. Understanding Rules in Live Streaming Micro Communities on Twitch

   https://doi.org/10.1145/3452918.3465491  

   Cai, Jie; Guanlao, Cameron; Wohn, Donghee Yvette (June 2021, IMX '21: ACM International Conference on Interactive Media Experiences)

   null (Ed.)

   Rules and norms are critical to community governance. Live streaming communities like Twitch consist of thousands of micro-communities called channels. We conducted two studies to understand the micro-community rules. Study one suggests that Twitch users perceive that both rules transparency and communication frequency matter to channel vibe and frequency of harassment. Study two finds that the most popular channels have no channel or chat rules; among these having rules, rules encouraged by streamers are prominent. We explain why this may happen and how this contributes to community moderation and future research. 

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3. What are Effective Strategies of Handling Harassment on Twitch?: Users' Perspectives

   https://doi.org/10.1145/3311957.3359478  

   Cai, Jie; Wohn, Donghee Yvette (November 2019, CSCW '19: Conference Companion Publication of the 2019 on Computer Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing)

   Harassment is an issue in online communities with the live streaming platform Twitch being no exception. In this study, we surveyed 375 Twitch users in person at TwitchCon, asking them about who should be responsible for deciding what should be allowed and what strategies they perceived to be effective in handling harassment. We found that users thought that streamers should be most responsible for enforcing rules and that either blocking bad actors, ignoring them, or trying to educate them were the most effective strategies. 

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4. Moderation Visibility: Mapping the Strategies of Volunteer Moderators in Live Streaming Micro Communities

   https://doi.org/10.1145/3452918.3458796  

   Cai, Jie; Wohn, Donghee Yvette; Almoqbel, Mashael (June 2021, IMX '21: ACM International Conference on Interactive Media Experiences)

   null (Ed.)

   Volunteer moderators actively engage in online content management, such as removing toxic content and sanctioning anti-normative behaviors in user-governed communities. The synchronicity and ephemerality of live-streaming communities pose unique moderation challenges. Based on interviews with 21 volunteer moderators on Twitch, we mapped out 13 moderation strategies and presented them in relation to the bad act, enabling us to categorize from proactive and reactive perspectives and identify communicative and technical interventions. We found that the act of moderation involves highly visible and performative activities in the chat and invisible activities involving coordination and sanction. The juxtaposition of real-time individual decision-making with collaborative discussions and the dual nature of visible and invisible activities of moderators provide a unique lens into a role that relies heavily on both the social and technical. We also discuss how the affordances of live-streaming contribute to these unique activities. 

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5. Volunteer Moderators in Twitch Micro Communities: How They Get Involved, the Roles They Play, and the Emotional Labor They Experience

   https://doi.org/10.1145/3290605.3300390  

   Wohn, Donghee Yvette (May 2019, Proceedings of the 2019 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems)

   The ability to engage in real-time text conversations is an important feature on live streaming platforms. The moderation of this text content relies heavily on the work of unpaid volunteers. This study reports on interviews with 20 people who moderate for Twitch micro communities, defined as channels that are built around a single or group of streamers, rather than the broadcast of an event. The study identifies how people become moderators, their different styles of moderating, and the difficulties that come with the job. In addition to the hardships of dealing with negative content, moderators also have complex interpersonal relationships with the streamers and viewers, where the boundaries between emotional labor, physical labor, and fun are intertwined. 

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