Introduction to the Minitrack on Streaming Media in Entertainment

Non peer reviewe

Introduction to the Minitrack on Streaming Media in Entertainment

publishedVersionNon peer reviewe

Interpersonal Relations and Social Actions on Live Streaming Services. A Systematic Review on Cyber-social Relations

This article provides a systematic review on interpersonal relations and social actions on live streaming services as, for instance, Twitch, Chaturbate, YouNow, or Taobao Live. Are those relations social, parasocial, or is there another specific kind of relation? Based on 77 articles, we give a short bibliometric overview and discuss interactions on live streaming services, social actions of streamers, social actions of viewers, shopping relations on live streaming services, and the streamers’ and viewers’ intentions to continuous actions leading (also supported by elements of gamification) the audience to a kind of stickiness towards individual streams, streamers, and services. Due to highly interactive communication between audience and broadcasters and among the viewers, social actions on live streaming services take a middle position between social and parasocial relations and―concerning shopping―also a middle position between physical event-shopping and ordering on an e-commerce platform. They form a new human-human relation, which we name “cyber-social relation.

Giving and Following Recommendations on Video-on-Demand Services

This is an empirical paper about giving, receiving and following recommendations on Video-on-Demand (VoD) services, including results on gender-specific differences. Based upon a model for infor-mation behavior on VoD services, we applied an online survey and generated 1,258 valid question-naires from active VoD users. Participants receive recommendations from the systems once a week on average, but they follow them only occasionally. They give actively recommendations to other people sever-al times a month. Users do not receive recommenda-tions from other users as often as from the services (only several times a month); however, they follow those personal recommendations more often. The most important source for receiving personal rec-ommendations is face-to-face communication. Obvi-ously, VoD users follow personal recommendations from other people more than suggestions from algo-rithmically generated recommender systems. Besides, self-determined content selection following intrinsic motivation is important. The findings are of interest for research on digital and social media and for VoD services

Motivations for the Use of Video Game Streaming Platforms: The Moderating Effect of Sex, Age and Self-Perception of Level as a Player

A particularly striking new phenomenon in recent years is the live streaming of video games through popular platforms, such as Twitch. This study focuses on the motivations and types of use underlying viewer participation in live streaming platforms. Based on the uses and gratifications theory, this paper aims to analyse how three basic motivations are related to the use of video game streaming platforms. Furthermore, it examines the moderating effects that significant variables, such as the audience member’s age, sex or self-perception of level as a player may exert on this relationship. The results reveal that the three types of motivations are positively associated with use of the platform, although notable differences appear, with informational motivations outweighing entertainment and social motivations. At the same time, no moderating effects on the results of the proposed model were found for the heterogeneity stemming from sex and age. Conversely, the influence of informational motivations on the use of these platforms is moderated by the self-perception of level as a player