This paper examines how microstreamers either intentionally or unintentionally share their intima... more This paper examines how microstreamers either intentionally or unintentionally share their intimate physical spaces with audiences. While most streaming research focuses on larger and/or monetized professional streamers, there is emerging research on ‘microstreaming’—streams whose audiences are often as low as single digits—and their importance as smaller, more intimate spaces. Given their casual nature, microstreamers are much less likely to have invested in professional level equipment, or to have dedicated streaming-specific areas of their homes. Some scholars have argued that streaming from intimate spaces such as bedrooms can be considered performative, yet our current research questions the broad applicability of such findings, especially with respect to microstreamers. One way to understand these shared spaces is through the lens of place. Streaming represents an event in which the barriers around the “first place” are intentionally removed, and spectatorship invited. Profess...
Proceedings of the Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, 2022
This work examines how the on-camera environments of small streamers with extremely limited audie... more This work examines how the on-camera environments of small streamers with extremely limited audiences (i.e. microstreamers) generate a form of authenticity directly from the unstaged nature of said environments, and through the multipurpose nature of these locations. While much of the current research on streaming has focused on larger, more professionalized (and monetized) activity, the microstreams explored here are significant in that they create a very different sense of audience engagement. The combination of (a) the unstaged nature of microstreaming environments, combined with (b) unscripted and unplanned actors and interruptions (pets, other members of the household, etc.) as well as (c) widely varying production values that range from nonexistent to low-budget mimicry of more professionalized streamers, work together to generate a kind of intimacy that is consciously or unconsciously leveraged by the streamer themselves. In their failure to successfully demarcate frontstage and backstage efforts, microstreamers successfully engage audience members in the messiness of life.
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Papers by Samuel Smyth