Abstract: Online synchronous platforms, such as live streaming, spend tremendous efforts ...
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Abstract: Online synchronous platforms, such as live streaming, spend tremendous efforts engaging users in a real-time setting, which has gained considerable popularity very recently. While the existing literature finds that the group size of peers positively affects user engagement on asynchronous platforms, the effect of group size remains unexplored in the context of synchronous streaming. In this work, we leverage the unique raid functionality, an exogenous increase in live streaming viewers, and empirically examine how group size affects users' real-time commenting engagement. Collecting and analyzing chat history in 13,382 playbacks on Twitch, our result suggests that existing viewers (users who engage in the live streaming channel before the raid) tend to engage less after the raid. The findings in this paper indicate a negative effect of group size on viewer engagement in the synchronous communication setting, which theoretically extends the prior literature in user engagement and crowd effects.
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Semantic filters:
Clubhouse
Topics:
Twitch live streaming platform social media digital platform chat room
Methods:
experimental group statistical hypothesis test longitudinal research difference in differences latent dirichlet allocation
