Toxic Communication on Twitch.tv. Effect of a Streamer

Abstract

This paper investigates on how spectators communication is organized in chats during broadcasts on Twitch.tv with the main focus on toxic communication. The main purpose of the paper is to understand how socio-demographic characteristics of a broadcaster and channel settings which broadcaster can control affect communication in a chat. Chat logs from Twitch.tv channels were used to create a topic model of viewers discussions. The result of regression analysis indicates that socio-demographic characteristics of a broadcaster have a statistically significant effect on the type of communication, which is manifested in chat.