The Analysis of Sexist and Masculinist Elements on the Twitch Platform through Live Videos and their Comments

Details

Supervisors

Cougnon, Louise-Amélie

Faculty

Faculté de philosophie, arts et lettres

Degree label

Master [120] en communication multilingue, à finalité spécialisée: langues des affaires

Abstract

Over the past 10 years, the streaming platform Twitch.tv has experienced significant popularity, allowing its users to broadcast live videos and interact together through a chatroom interface. Although it attracts millions of daily visitors, it appears that sexism and masculinism are omnipresent in all their forms on the website. This research aims to analyse the Twitch platform, investigating potential sexist and masculinist speech from streamers and the comments in the chatroom. The study examines selected Twitch accounts in both French and English, ensuring anonymity. The initial analysis focuses on primary discourse and aims to determine the nature of sexist comments made during live streams, the difference of usage between English-speaking and French-speaking streamers, and the various modes of expressing such comments, ranging them from individual words to complete sentences. The second analysis focuses on primary and secondary discourses, confronting streamers' oral discourse with chat comments, attempting to ascertain whether streamer speech initiates hate or if it is a resultant effect of viewer comments. Lastly, this study evaluates adherence to Twitch's community guidelines regarding hate speech. The aim of this research encompasses the frequency and context of sexist and masculinist behaviours, adherence to platform guidelines, and linguistic differences between English and French streamers.