Genre Analysis on Twitch Chat Yasir Al-Zubaidy

Genre Analysis on Twitch Chat
                                  Yasir Al-Zubaidy

Writer’s Statement
       Yasir was born in Iraq and immigrated with his family to Oman, only recently moving to
Canada. He aspires to work in the medical field and is majoring in biology for health sciences
and psychology. In the age of online schools, he found himself spending a lot of time on Twitch,
a livestreaming website, following his favorite streamers. He also enjoys going on long bicycle
rides and likes to follow the world of motorsports, Formula 1 especially.
       Yasir found this assignment one of the more difficult ones in his 1st year. Having only
understood the aspects of what a genre is a few weeks ago, Yasir was worried about making a
paper that explores a genre within a scholarly discussion. However, the task became easier
when he found out he was able to discuss the genre of a website he likes. Still, the greatest
sources of help for Yasir were his peers and his professor, Chris. Yasir struggled with gathering
literature sources that matched his topic, especially since it was a somewhat new type of genre.
Fortunately, his peers and professor were very helpful in directing him towards certain papers
and books that provided valuable analysis of the concepts Yasir was exploring.
       Yasir’s experience with ISP100 has been nothing short of valuable. It was not
merely an assignment heavy class, as he expected initially. Instead, ISP100 helped Yasir change
the very way he approached the writing process, from gathering ideas all the way to putting the
final edits. His advice for future students would be to put more emphasis on the planning part
of assignments, making sure to brainstorm ideas, order them, and draw or write out a plan for
how these ideas fit together before beginning to write the paper.

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Writing for University and Beyond:
                               A Journal of First Year Writing at UTM               Volume 1, 2021

                             Genre Analysis on Twitch Chat
                                   Yasir Al-Zubaidy
       In today’s digital age, numerous platforms allow content creators to amass followers.
One of these platforms is the rapidly-growing streaming website Twitch. Twitch allows creators
to stream live in front of an audience for hours. While the streamers dictate what happens on
stream, the viewers can participate by sending chat messages through the chat box.
Unfortunately, it is common for people who visit the platform for the first time and watch
popular streams to have a poor impression of Twitch chat. This is because it becomes
impossible to read more than a message or two in the chat box, which scrolls so quickly when
there are thousands of viewers on a stream. Some people may dismiss Twitch chat as a useless
feature with no real benefit to the audience. In different contexts and streams, however,
Twitch chat can become so vital that entire stream ideas revolve around interactions with chat.
Even in the bigger streams where the streamer may not read every chat message, chat plays an
essential role in the viewers’ experience as it transforms the experience from a passive one to a
more interactive and enjoyable one. This paper will discuss what is chat, how it can be defined
as a genre, how it varies between different contexts, and why chat’s adaptability makes it an
indispensable part of Twitch for both streamers and viewers alike.
       Almost every social media website has a section for the audience’s comments, and chat
is that section in Twitch. The chat box is a space for the viewers to interact with one another
and with the streamer. The viewers can ask and answer questions, share their ideas and
opinions, and react to what is happening on stream either by words or Twitch’s unique emotes
[emoticons that are used to convey emotions or reactions to what is happening on stream]
whose names can also be used if the emotes are popular enough. Thus, multiple types of
communication between different parties in Twitch can all occur within the same box labelled
“chat.” Despite this apparent variety, Twitch chat encompasses a unique identity, distinguished
by the language used and the very nature of livestreams in Twitch where the audience can
directly interact with the content’s creator.

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       While on the surface, the uniqueness of Twitch chat as a mode of communication can
distinguish it as a rhetorical genre in the traditional sense, this distinction becomes weaker on a
deeper level. The traditional notion of genre was defined by Swales (1990) as “a class of
communicative events, the members of which share some set of communicative purposes” (p.
58). As Twitch chat has its unique language of emotes, it satisfies the requirement for a “class of
communicative events” (p. 58). Also, as the audience can directly interact live with the content
(and content creator) through chat, Twitch chat possess a common “communicative purpose”
(p. 58). However, Twitch chat starts to stray apart from the traditional notion of genre. Swales
insists that “patterns of similarity in terms of structure, style, content and intended audience”
(p. 58) also exist within a single genre. However, Twitch chat breaks this consistency in style and
structure frequently. For example, Figure 1 shows two screenshots from a livestream’s chat.
Although both screenshots were taken from the chat of the same stream, they barely resemble
each other. The messages in the left screenshot mostly consist of complete and well thought
out sentences, while the messages on the right almost only feature very brief single-worded
reactions. Figure 1 highlights a clear deviation from Swales’ focus on consistency within a genre.
Thus, Twitch chat does not completely match the traditional notion of genre.
Figure 1.
Two screenshots taken at different moments from the same stream from the Twitch channel
HealthyGame_GG (Twitch, 2021)

       To recognize why Twitch chat differs from the traditional notion of genre, a crucial
aspect of Twitch must be understood. That is, the content on Twitch cannot be paused. This

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Writing for University and Beyond:
                               A Journal of First Year Writing at UTM              Volume 1, 2021

feature is different than many other websites. For example, a YouTube video is always available
and can be paused anytime. In contrast, the very nature of a livestream dictates that things are
always moving. This attribute of livestreams affects how chat works. Each new chat message
appears at the bottom of the chat box, and the chat box automatically scrolls down as newer
messages appear, pushing older messages out of screen. As a result, each message appears on
screen for a limited amount of time; more messages means less time each one stays on screen.
When combining this factor with what is happening on stream, Twitch chat behaves in three
distinguishable ways that are classified as “subgenres” in this paper: reaction-oriented chat
(ROC), discussion-oriented (DOC), and interaction-oriented chat (IOC).
       In the first subgenre, the ROC, the audience members often unanimously convey a
certain emotion or reaction to a sudden or important event on stream. These reactions are
often expressed through very brief abbreviated messages in addition to a frequent use of
emotes. In such cases, the chat often erupts in what Hamilton (2014) described as a “waterfall
of text” (p. 1321). Much like a real waterfall, the messages keep on coming in a seemingly
endless river, where they somewhat blend in together to create a larger picture of this quickly
scrolling wall of text and emotes. Some might view this blending of text as a reason to not
participate in chat, claiming that these messages become meaningless. In reality, however,
these chat messages resemble “something like the roar of a crowd in a stadium” (p. 1321)
where the games feel more exciting from a spectator’s point of view as they hear the crowd
shouting and reacting to what is happening in the moment. Like these crowds, Twitch chat
provides the “stadium” for the viewers to actively erupt in reaction to what is happening on
stream, thus, enhancing their overall experience.
       Next, in the DOC subgenre, chat messages consist of well-structured, complete
sentences that convey ideas, opinions, suggestions, and questions. Additionally, the discussion
in this subgenre can occur between the streamer and the audience, or between the audience
members themselves. Therefore, a higher level of thinking and participation is required in this
subgenre when compared to an ROC. This type of chat emerges mainly due to the content of
the stream. As the streamer begins to discuss topics, narrate a story, or ask the audience, the
streamer then dedicates more time to read and respond to chat messages. Consequently, the

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                                A Journal of First Year Writing at UTM                Volume 1, 2021

audience seems to give more thought and depth to their messages, since they have more value
within the stream, and the audience member may receive a direct response from the streamer.
As more complete chat messages become common, a DOC is then established.
       Lastly, the IOC is a new, less popular but very distinctive subgenre of Twitch chat that
arose because of the launch of interactive streams where the audience has an immediate link
to the streams’ content. A great example of such streams was the famous “Twitch Plays
Pokémon” stream in 2015 (James, 2018). During that stream, users were able to input
commands into a playthrough of the game Pokémon through keywords in Twitch chat. Such
keywords included “up,” “down,” and “select,” which were captured through a program to be
used as inputs on the game. Thus, the messages in an IOC consist primarily of keywords and
numbers that directly correspond to a function on stream and would otherwise become
meaningless in other contexts. This new type of chat subgenre provides an interactive
experience for the audience that is not possible on many other websites.
       It is clear that Twitch chat can change between different streams and even within the
same stream. Twitch chat is not a rigid structure that limits the interactions of its users. Instead,
chat is a medium for interactions between the streamers and the audience where
communication can occur in numerous forms, from emotes and numbers to questions and full
discussions. This perspective on Twitch chat goes against the restricted view of genre that some
people hold. Devitt (2004) warned that this view perceives genre as “a normalizing and static
concept, a set of dictated forms that constrain the individual” (p. 5). This view becomes
especially problematic when people tune into Twitch for the first time, where they are most
likely to watch a bigger stream with a quickly moving chat that resembles an ROC. If this static
view of genre is held, it pushes people to dismiss chat as useless across the whole platform.
However, in reality chat is much more than a box for meaningless messages.
       Twitch chat as a genre is a constantly changing form. Twitch chat can become the
“stadium” where the audience erupts in excitement, or the “debate chamber” where opinions
are debated, or the “game controller” where thousands of viewers can play a game at the same
time. This malleability of the chat and its ability to adapt to situations based on the content,
pace, and popularity of a stream is what makes chat an essential element within Twitch.

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Therefore, chat can serve multiple purposes through multiple methods all within the same box
on the same website.
       At first glance, Twitch chat may seem like a useless feature with no real benefit for
participation, especially in bigger streams. However, how long a chat message appears is not
what makes chat useful in every context in Twitch as the platform has a wide array of content
streams. Twitch chat is the medium that connects the audience members with each other and
with the streamer, which is what differentiates watching a livestream on Twitch from a
recorded video elsewhere. Therefore, while livestreams may be seen as the heart of Twitch, it is
the chat box that provides the foundation for these livestreams to flourish and be enjoyed by
thousands of viewers every day.

References
Devitt, A. J. (2004). Writing genres. Southern Illinois UP.
Hamilton, W. A., Garretson, O., & Kerne, A. (2014). Streaming on Twitch: Fostering participatory
     communities of play within live mixed media. Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on
     Human Factors in Computing Systems, 1315–1324.
     https://doi.org/10.1145/2556288.2557048
HealthyGamer_GG. (n.d.). Twitch. Retrieved March 27, 2021, from
     https://www.twitch.tv/healthygamer_gg?ab_channel=healthygamer_gg
James, E. A. (2018). Using rhetorical criticism to track Twitch Plays Pokémon fans’ attachment
     to sacrifice. Transformative Works and Cultures, 28(1).
     https://doi.org/10.3983/twc.2018.1438
Swales, J. (1990). Genre analysis: English in academic and research settings. Cambridge
       University Press.

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