What motivates audience comments on live streaming platforms?

Abstract

This study aims to discuss audiences' interaction and engagement with live streaming from a sociological perspective to investigate the different effects of information factors on audiences' real-time interactions. Based on the interaction ritual chains theory, a data crawler was written using Python to collect data on the Huajiao platform for 1090 groups from 480 video game live rooms and 610 talent show live rooms. The results show that audiences' commenting was mostly affected by the number of viewers, the gender of streamers, the number of likes, the number of gifts, and the duration of the live stream. Group comparison found that the effect of the number of viewers was significantly stronger in video game streaming, while the number of likes had a negative effect in video game streaming and a strong positive effect in live talent shows.