Abstract
Live steaming become an emerging significant phenomenon for creating huge market value in business. When it is reposed successful stories about the live streaming economy, researchers are interested in how a live streaming can be successful. Current studies explore this issue by investigating the motivations that can drive audiences watching a live streaming. However, it remains unclear about how and why the liver streamers perform particular practices to attract audiences and manage their live streaming. This study bridges this gap by applying the dramaturgical theory to explain the process where live streamers manage consumer’s sensemaking process with image creation. The dramaturgical theory regards individual daily behaviors as ‘performances in front of others.’ Specifically, an individual is like an actor, who manage her image by performing certain behaviors in front of people. This theory provides an opportunity to analyzes the live streaming practices by revealing the live steamers’ understandings that constitute and support their ‘performances’ in the live streaming platform. Our findings identify three types of performance, namely idols, master players, and market seekers. Our analysis discusses the three types of performance by describing the live stream understandings on the stage (i.e. the live streaming industry), on the audience they faced, and on the roles they played (i.e. as live streamers) to unfold the logic embedded in live streaming practices. Our findings can contribute to deepen current understanding on live streaming practices and provide insights to aim live streamers to leverage audience’s sensemaking for image creation.
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Chu, TH., Shen, YL., Lee, YH. (2022). Unfolding the Practices of Live Streaming: A Dramaturgical Theory Perspective. In: Fui-Hoon Nah, F., Siau, K. (eds) HCI in Business, Government and Organizations. HCII 2022. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 13327. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-05544-7_34
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