Sentiment Analysis of How Differently Male and Female Streamers Chat on TWITCH.TV

Video gameplay has traditionally been social, with arcades providing an outlet for public play and consoles, allowing people to play together at home. Onlookers are not limited to being passive spectatorship as they are also provided the opportunity to engage directly with the player, with gameplay live streaming being the newest iteration. Live streaming of video games has become dominated in most countries by the website Twitch.tv, where the challenge concerns highly skilled players with minimal communication and exchange, conversely, prioritizes showmanship over gameplay. This paper focuses on common communication characteristics of viewers who often send single messages and streamers who elaborate. Based on a large real dataset of live stream chats, this paper uses sentiment analysis to explore and compare the findings of different communication theories regarding viewers and how they perceive streamers along the spectrum of different sentiments. Keywords: video gameplay, sentiment analysis, live streaming, communication, twitch.tv