One spoken about topic in our ever changing world is the representation of gender in our mass media. Media is forever able to influence our opinion and is ever impressionable on individuals.
Looking particularly at one of the biggest online media service, we are presented with Twitch. An online streaming platform where individuals can stream videogames online for an audience to watch. According to Mediakix, an influencer marketing agency, Twitch users consume 71 million hours of content a day with an average of 15 million daily active users. Such a large audience and user amount quite means that it could be considered quite the influential platform in the right hands.
Videogames in today’s world are just as a higher form of entertainment than any other. But what I seek to learn about is the interaction between characters in videogames and the individuals that livestream the game, but more critically I seek to learn through the perspective of gender. Gender representation in videogames has been an extremely controversial topic throughout time as well. Many games stuck to the complete gender stereotypes of male and female, knights and damsels.
I want to analyse how streamers interact with these characters on the stream and see their opinions of them.
This being done via 3 main processes;
- 1st Hand Experience – through my own Twitch channel I plan to do a stream at least once every fortnight and examine how I interact with the characters whether that is unknowingly or knowingly. Through this use of my own twitch channel I am then able to find a way to present my research findings and also cater to an audience.
- Examining Streamers – this being fairly clear, but analysing streamers videos and their actions with their characters is key to understanding how they interact with them on a gender basis, do streamers seem to be more judgemental of an emotionally aware male? Or a powerful woman?
- Researching Current Academic Articles and gathering research.
My pitch video below explains a few more in depth things such as my timeline plan, and some of the more academic readings that helped me build my basis for my study. I also have a brief chat about how I will be presenting my digital artefact for BCM215.
So in summary, watch this space and follow me on Twitch! (@lyeraac)
AMC Blogs 
Reblogged this on Game Cultures.
LikeLike
I really liked the layout of your blog and I found the introduction into your area of research study very insightful. You seemed very well versed on the community of twitch streamers you were investigating and it seemed like you had already conducted a fair amount of preliminary research into this community.
I feel like the topic of feminism/ gender and female representation in video game streaming is a very great contemporary framework. However I did have a bit of trouble piecing together your broader framework. In your video you brush over multiple studies and ideas but I struggled a bit to work out the key frameworks you would be analysing and which aspect of streaming para-texts you will be looking into.
Are you thinking of looking mostly at females? Are you thinking of looking into general representation. A look into the gender based interaction of characters and streamers is a great idea for a research topic. My advice would be to look into clearly defining your frameworks because it seems you’re very passionate about the topic and well researched and informed.
When you mention “whether the game wants different genders to interact differently”. I think you could elaborate on that more as well as explain which framework you’ll use to analyse it. I.E. Feminist, Structural, Formalist etc.
I recommend this article as it goes deep into how gender similarities and differences shape the video games market.
https://newzoo.com/insights/articles/male-and-female-gamers-how-their-similarities-and-differences-shape-the-games-market/
This article looks deeply at gender and choice in the game market. There’s a particular graph which look into which games sell more to women. I think you could analyse whether those games are played more by female streamers or males. Through a formalism framework as well as whether representation of women is typically more favourable in those markets.
You showed some great digital literacy in your ideas for presentation and research however I think you missed out on points on explaining your target audience, utility and niche. (Its hard to fit it all in 2 mins)
You had some great info and a lot of great studies and analysis. I definitely understood where you were going with you pitch however I think you could’ve been a tab bit clearer in you communication of that. However those are easy fixes. You’ve definitely chosen an interesting topic, I’ve followed you on twitter and I wish you the very best 🙂
LikeLike
Hi Alex,
Your pitch is very interesting and appeals to me greatly as the topic of how different genders are treated over video and streaming services reflects on society itself and has very broad implications on all media. You already seem very well informed on the online twitch community and have done a lot of independent research.
Just as Daimyo stated, I’m curious if you intent to cover gender as a whole or only women, I’m indifferent to both, but would like to understand what perspective you’re tackling this from.
I found this source https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0225763 , it relates to your topic and offers an interesting perspective it’s defiantly worth a read.
Overall I was really impressed with your pitch, keep up the good work
Kyle 🙂
LikeLike
Hi Alex,
I love all things feminism; I think this is a great DA idea. Are you going to focus on a particular game or just a variety? Especially of you going to play games too. It is clear that you are going to focus on feminist and gender frameworks. I reckon if you look a little into cultural capitol regarding your frameworks you already have, they could go really nicely together and add another level to your research. Or even look at the history in the same context, I think little source I found probably explains what I am trying to say here: https://headstuff.org/topical/female-representation-in-video-games-history/. All in all though you seem to have a clear idea of what you want to do and it does look great, good luck with it!
LikeLike