Accepted for/Published in: JMIR Research Protocols
Date Submitted: May 2, 2023
Date Accepted: Sep 14, 2023
Warning: This is an author submission that is not peer-reviewed or edited. Preprints - unless they show as "accepted" - should not be relied on to guide clinical practice or health-related behavior and should not be reported in news media as established information.
COVID-19 views on Twitch: poll and chat content analysis
ABSTRACT
Background:
The COVID-19 pandemic has presented social and political challenges for vaccination communication. Despite high willingness to vaccinate, certain demographics have expressed higher rates of vaccine hesitancy, including young men in Australia who have traditionally been difficult to engage in health communication efforts. In the digital age, it is important to explore alternative modes of communication to address these challenges.
Objective:
This protocol study aimed to pilot test the potential of Twitch, a live streaming platform initially designed for video gaming, to conduct health communication research with young men.
Methods:
In this study, the research team worked with a Twitch Account Manager to identify suitable streamers and establish a protocol for conducting research on the platform. This involved conducting a poll to initiate discussion about COVID-19 vaccination and monitoring the chat in three live Twitch sessions with two streamers to pilot the protocol.
Results:
The Twitch streams provided logs and videos on demand (VODs) that were derived from the live session. This included demographics of viewers, chat logs and polling results. Analysis of the Twitch chat logs revealed themes such as irrelevant comments, misinformation, comedic and conspiracy responses, as well as vaccine status, pro-vaccine comments, and vaccine hesitant comments.
Conclusions:
This study explored the potential of Twitch as a novel channel for health communication research with a hard-to-reach population. With live polling, open text discussion between participants and immediate responses to questions, Twitch offers a unique opportunity to connect with traditionally difficult to reach demographics. Its unique features and resources provide a solid foundation for health communication. For research, the platform can be used to produce quantitative and qualitative data, but also presents some challenges when engaging with independent streamers and sensitive health topics. This study provides a protocol for researchers to utilise and build on.
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Copyright
© The authors. All rights reserved. This is a privileged document currently under peer-review/community review (or an accepted/rejected manuscript). Authors have provided JMIR Publications with an exclusive license to publish this preprint on it's website for review and ahead-of-print citation purposes only. While the final peer-reviewed paper may be licensed under a cc-by license on publication, at this stage authors and publisher expressively prohibit redistribution of this draft paper other than for review purposes.