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Watch Me Code: Programming Mentorship Communities on Twitch.tv

Published: 01 November 2018 Publication History
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    Live streaming-an emerging practice of broadcasting video of oneself in real time to an online audience-is often used by people to portray themselves engaged in a craft such as programming. Viewers of these 'creative streams' gather to watch the streamer at work and to interact with the streamer and other audience members. However, little is known about how creative streamers engage with their audience, how their viewership communities form and operate, and how creative streams may support learning. In this study, we used a participant-observer method to study game development streams on the live streaming site Twitch.tv. We found that live streams support the growth of learning-focused communities that mentor both the streamer and each other during and after streams. We show the influence of streamers in creating a space for learning and motivating learners. Finally, we discuss implications for online education and communities of practice.

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    cover image Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction
    Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction  Volume 2, Issue CSCW
    November 2018
    4104 pages
    EISSN:2573-0142
    DOI:10.1145/3290265
    Issue’s Table of Contents
    Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than the author(s) must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected].

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    Publication History

    Published: 01 November 2018
    Published in PACMHCI Volume 2, Issue CSCW

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    Author Tags

    1. communities of practice
    2. cscl
    3. live coding
    4. live streaming
    5. mentoring
    6. twitch

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    • (2024)Towards integrated learning experiences on social media: An exploration of #DayInTheLife videos for career explorationProceedings of the 2024 ACM Designing Interactive Systems Conference10.1145/3643834.3661566(1722-1740)Online publication date: 1-Jul-2024
    • (2024)Meditating in Live Stream: An Autoethnographic and Interview Study to Investigate Motivations, Interactions and ChallengesProceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction10.1145/36374178:CSCW1(1-33)Online publication date: 26-Apr-2024
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