Paratexts for strategic communication: The US Army Esports Team on Twitch

The US Army Esports Team (USAE) was launched in 2018 as an experimental effort to use game streaming for military recruitment. The team’s efforts to engage online with gaming culture have been plagued with scandal and highlight the structural limits of dialogic communication with military services. This study is framed by a 2020 incident in which a USAE streamer on Twitch blocked users asking about war crimes, an act that civil rights lawyers argued violated the First Amendment. It analyzes the USAE’s saved Twitch videos and accompanying chat logs as paratexts, or media that derives its communicative register from gameplay while serving as a primary strategic communication channel for the Army. Using qualitative data analysis, it identifies three forms of talk in the streams: Game Talk, Stream Talk, and Army Talk. These forms of talk reveal a persistent mismatch between the participatory norms of gaming culture and the institutional constraints of military communication. The case illustrates the structural limits of dialogic public relations models when applied to federal agencies operating on commercial, participatory platforms.