Toxicity in Twitch Live Stream Chats: Towards Understanding the Impact of Gender, Size of Community and Game Genre

Twitch is a leading global live-streaming platform primarily focused on gaming content. However, it is evolving significantly beyond gaming, making it increasingly relevant as a social media and communication platform. Through its chat feature, thousands of streamers interact with their followers in real time. Thereby, the viewers interact with each other or the streamer through a chat. Also here, addressing toxicity and negative posts in the chat, a common challenge on social media platforms, is crucial. Twitch’s fast-growing user base creates a potential breeding ground for toxic and hateful behavior. In this first study, we examine Twitch chats to better understand potential toxic behavior. By selecting a diverse group of streamers based on followers, streaming content, and gender, we offer insights into this under-represented research topic and propose ideas for preventing toxicity in live chats.