Title Authors

An unexpected journey: A Tommaso Venturini,

few lessons from science Po Mathieu Jacomy, Axel
medialab's experience Meunier and Bruno Latour

Bruno Latour, Pablo

‘The whole is always smaller Jensen, Tommaso
than its parts’ – a digital test Venturini, Sébastian
of Gabriel Tardes’ monads Grauwin and Dominique
Boullier
What happens to ANT, and
its emphasis on the socio- Carolin Gerlitz and Esther
material grounding of the Weltevrede
social, in digital sociology?
Reassembling social science
Evelyn Ruppert, John Law
methods: the challenge of
and Mike Savage
digital devices

Tweets Are Not Created

Carolin Gerlitz and
Equal investigating Twitter's
Bernhard Rieder
client ecosystem
Regramming the Platform: Carolin Gerlitz, Anne
Infrastructural Relations Helmond, Fernando N. van
between Apps and Social der Vlist, and Esther
Media Weltevrede

Jean-Christophe Plantin,
Infrastructure studies meet
Carl Lagoze, Paul N.
platform studies in theage of
Edwards and Christian
Google and Facebook
Sandvig
 Michael Dieter, Carolin
Gerlitz, Anne Helmond,
Multi-Situated App Studies:
Nathaniel Tkacz, Fernando
Methods and Propositions
N. van der Vlist, and Esther
Weltevrede

The New Practices and

Infrastructures of
Hendrik Storstein Spilker,
Participation: How the
Kristine Ask and Martin
Popularity of Twitch.tv
Hansen
challenges old and new Ideas
about Television Viewing
 Colin Ford, Dan Gardner,
Chat Speed OP PogChamp :
Leah Elaine Horgan,
Practices of
Calvin Liu, a.m. tsaasan,
Coherence in Massive
Bonnie Nardi, and Jordan
Twitch Chat
Rickman

Toward a Twitch Research

Erik Harpstead, Juan
Toolkit: A Systematic
Sebastian Rios, Joseph
Review of Approaches to
Seering, and Jessica
Research on Game
Hammer
Streaming
 Streaming on Twitch:
Fostering Participatory William A. Hamilton,
Communities Oliver Garretson, and
of Play within Live Mixed Andruid Kerne
Media

The Affective Labor and

Jamie Woodcock and Mark
Performance of Live
R. Johnson
Streaming on Twitch.tv
Toward a Transcription and
analysis of live streaming on Recktenwald, Daniel
Twitch.tv
 Abstract

In this article, we present a few lessons we learnt in the establishment of the Sciences
laboratory associating social scientists, code developers and information designers, th
last years, several of such initiatives have been established around the world to harnes
for the study of collective life. If we narrate this particular story, it is because, having
an intimate account of the surprises and displacements of digital research. Founding t
were leaving the reassuring traditions of social sciences to venture in the unexplored t
couldn’t foresee was how much such encounter would change our research. Buying in
that the main novelty of digital research came from handling larger amounts of data. W
digital inscriptions comes instead from their proliferating diversity. Such diversity enc
alliances, research practices and theoretical perspectives. It also led us to overcome se
characterize social sciences (qualitative/quantitative, situation/aggregation, micro/mac
direction of a more continuous sociology.

In this paper we argue that the new availability of digital data sets allows one torevisi
theory that entirely dispensed withusing notions such as individual or society. Our arg
cumbersome or simply slow to assemble and to navigate through themasses of inform
to treat data about social connections by defining two levels: one for the element, the
have the experience of following individuals through theirconnections (which is often
more rewarding tobegin navigating datasets without making the distinction between th
that of aggregated structure. It becomes possible to give some credibility to Tarde’s st
that it is just thissort of navigational practice that is now made possible by digitally av
practice could modify social theory if we could visualizethis new type of exploration
Data-intensive platform media bring up, but also reconfigure the question of the socio
chapter explores how recent engagements with platforms and digital sociology do mo
a flat socio-material account ofthe social without in-built levels of ‘micro’ and ‘macro
reconfigure who or what can count as an actor, what counts as social and what as mat
question of method. In a case study of tweets in the run up to th eBrexit vote, this pap
automation of social life through bots,software enabled activity and cross-syndication
socio-material constitution of the social in platform media and the limits their infrastr
principle of “follow the actor”. If the socio-material accomplishment is increasingly o
methodologies may involve different, unexpected and more difficult manoeuvres than
The aim of the paper is to intervene in debates about the digital and in particular fram
epochal shifts or as redefining life. Instead, drawing on recent developments in digital
productive and performative qualities of the digital by attending to the specificities of
and sometimes compete, with older devices and their capacity to mobilise and materia
so, our aim is to explore the implications of digital devices and data for reassembling
the social science apparatuses that assemble digital devices and data to ‘know’ the so
recent work at CReSC on the Social Life of Methods, we recommend a genealogical a
which digital devices are simultaneously shaped by the social world, and can in turn b
This calls for attending to the specificities of digital devices themselves, how they are
technical arrangements, and are enrolled in the creation of new knowledge spaces, ins
exploring what large-scale changes can be revealed and understood through the digita
digital devices themselves are materially implicated in the production and performanc
end we offer nine propositions about the implications of digital data and devices and a
theoretical assumptions of social science methods to take into account the following:
visualisation; continuous time; whole populations; granularity; expertise; mobile and

This article offers an investigation into the developer ecosystem of platforms drawing
explores how third-party clients enable different “ways of being” on Twitter. It sugge
digital data as traces of distributed accomplishments between platforms, users, interfa
follows three main steps: We discuss how Twitter’s bounded openness enables and st
through grammatization of action. We then suggest ways to explore and qualify sourc
of nearly 32 million tweets, retrieved from Twitter’s 1% random sample. We explore
differences in tweet characteristics and degrees of automation, and outline methodolo
to further investigate the heterogeneous practices common metrics risk flattening into
returning to the question about the measures of the medium, suggesting how they mig
increasingly distributed platform ecosystems, and how platform data challenge key id
In this article, we empirically analyse the infrastructural relations between mobile app
present a methodology to account for app–platform relations. Contrary to previous res
develop our approach from the perspective of apps based on a relational understandin
approach to platforms and infrastructure provides critical insights into (i) the kinds of
peripheries of social media platforms, (ii) the diverse practices and features supported
the messy and contingent nature of the relations between apps and social media platfo
into alternative forms of platform programmability beyond APIs and into social medi
driven by creative developer workarounds. Drawing on quantitative and qualitative fo
apps related to Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, and Twitter, we explore how third-par
‘grammars of action’ of social media platforms and outline five distinct forms of regra
how app developers work with and around the affordances, action grammars, and con
their data and functionality. We conclude with conceptual and methodological reflect
between apps and social media platforms, app stores, and mobile platforms from the p

Two theoretical approaches have recently emerged to characterize new digital objects
infrastructure studies and platform studies. Despite their separate origins and differen
how the cross-articulation of these two perspectives improves our understanding of cu
studies of the Open Web, Facebook, and Google to demonstrate that infrastructure stu
the evolution of shared, widely accessible systems and services of the type often prov
public interest. On the other hand, platform studies captures how communication and
constrained by new digital systems and new media. In these environments, platform-b
infrastructure, while both new and existing infrastructures are built or reorganized on
underlining the potential of this combined framework for future case studies.
This article discusses methodological approaches to app studies, focusing on their em
multiple infrastructural settings. Our approach involves close attention to the multival
packages, particularly their capacity to enter into diverse groupings and relations depe
situations. The changing situations they evoke and participate in, accordingly, make a
of unique ways. Therefore, engaging with and even staging these situations allows for
dynamics associated with apps and their infrastructures to be investigated through a st
multisituated app studies. This article offers an overview of four different entry points
multi-situated approach, focusing on app stores, app interfaces, app packages, and app
propositions that develop out of these studies as prompts for further research.

A central theme in media research has been the transition from traditional broadcast m
media and streaming services. For both researchers and practitioners in the field, a cru
understand the emerging forms of flexibility and interactivity that characterize the use
adds to this work by analyzing new viewing and audience practices of the streaming p
emergent ways of viewing and engaging with broadcasts both challenges and revitaliz
audience studies. For some years, researchers and media analytics have been discussin
YouTube and other on-demand streaming services represents the death of linear-TV (
2016). Conventional wisdom dictates that only sports and other great events will upho
traditional television (see e.g. Stover and Moner, 2014; Esler, 2016; Dhoest and Simo
how linear-TV is re-emerging in other, novel forms as well. Central to the analysis is
“affective switching”, which is used to illuminate the ways in which Twitch practices
dimensions of flexibility, convenience and user-control to our understandings of the c
“linear-TV”.
Twitch.tv, a streaming platform known for video game content, has grown tremendou
examine communication practices in Twitch chats for the popular game Hearthstone,
10,000 concurrent viewers and small chats with fewer than 2,000 concurrent viewers.
massive chats, communication patterns no longer follow models developed in previou
communication. Rather than what other studies have described as communication bre
participants in massive chats communicate in what we call “crowdspeak.”

The rise of game streaming services has driven a complementary increase in research
takes shape, there is a need to understand the approaches being used in the space, and
and replicated between researchers with different disciplinary backgrounds. In this pa
review of game streaming research. Papers were coded for their research focus, prima
Across the prior work we found three common themes: (1) work that is readily suppo
(2) work that does not require explicit technical support, (3) and work that would ben
By identifying these needs in the literature, we take the first step toward developing a
platforms that can unify the breadth of methods being applied in the space.
Previously, video streaming sites were at the fringes of online social media. In the pas
videogames, on sites such as Twitch.tv, have become very popular. Live streams serv
communities. The Twitch streaming medium combines broadcast video with open IR
gameplay, viewer participation and community building gain emphasis. Twitch stream
intimate communities with fifty viewers, to massive broadcasts with tens of thousands
ethnographic investigation of the live streaming of video games on Twitch. We find th
places, in which in formal communities emerge, socialize, and participate. Overtime,
shared identities drawn from streams’ contents and participants’ shared experiences. W
stream communities form, the motivations of members, and emergent issues in the me
findings to derive implications for design of live mixed-media environments to suppo

This article explores affective and immaterial labor on the leading live-streaming plat
hundred million regular viewers and two million regular broadcasters. This labor invo
countenance, including being friendly to viewers, soliciting donations, building paras
engaging audiences through humor. We offer an examination of streamers broadcastin
within the context of play becoming work, the labor of performance and acting, and th
cultural labor on Twitch. We draw on hundred interviews with professional and aspiri
conducted in 2016 and 2017 at gaming events across the United Kingdom, the United
alongside ethnographic research. This inquiry into the dynamics of digital games and
studying live streaming as part of a wider critical investigation of contemporary digita
Online live streaming is a new media genre that combines the broadcast of an activity
communication. Lacking an analytical entry point, descriptions and micro-level analy
Using the case of online live streaming of video games, this paper asks two questions
in order to systematically account for the activity and the cross-modal communication
Secondly, how does the unfolding of the activity influence the cross-modal discourse
answering the first question, this paper develops a multi-column transcription scheme
spoken language & embodied conduct, the audience's written chat messages as well a
argued that the basic principles of this format are applicable to other forms of live stre
Afterwards, the transcript is used for exemplary analysis to address the second questio
broadcasters are more tightly regulated by the unfolding of the activity than the audie
cross-modal communicative practices. The numerous audience members write quick a
the broadcasters are selective and produce fewer but more elaborate responses that sp
introduces ‘pivoting’ and argues that it is a novel communicative behavior typical for
second analysis, the paper will show that game events elicit pivoting utterances or me
audience, which attribute a highly contextual and locally negotiated meaning to the ev
 100 Words

Venturini et al’s talked about the stories and journeys within SciencePo’s
medialab. They argued that the practice of digital research goes beyond
traditional research in which it goes beyond the classical dichotomies such
as: quantitative and qualitative, macro and micro, aggregates and situations,
individuals and structures. It calls a continuity of both in methods, in which
it is encourage for the researchers to give access to the readers the data for
experimentation and replicability, and continuity in theory which
disestablishes the divide on how the individuals and aggregates interact and
forcing them to interact together in a different manner.

Latour et al. presented the ideas of Gabriel Tarde’s concept of ‘monad’

which is an alternative way for researchers and social theorists to navigate
data sets. According to them, 2-LS has been looking at entities with fixated
rules, such as there exist and individual, interaction and structure. But
Tarde’s concept of monad does away with these fixated rules and retains the
attributes of entities while recognizing those attributes as monads that
connects to different entities. This perspective creates a navigation that is
flat that no longer glorifies some entity that makes different entities behave
in a certain way.
Geertz and Weltevrede’s chapter has raised issues in applying ANT’s
principle of ‘following the actor’ in digital research. This is because there
has been a lot of complications in which to define what counts as actor, or
network. Presenting their research, they have shown how automation in
social media platforms, such as Twitter, complicate in identifying the traces
or data that are needed to pinpoint the associations of different actors. They
further discusses how these different ‘devices’ of automation can be rather
considered as practice instead of actors. They have adequately presented a
valid problem in which ANT practitioners should take into consideration.
In Ruppert et al’s article, it talks about how social science methods are being
reshaped or being reinvented within the digital sphere. They argued that
digital ‘devices’ must be central when doing digital research. They
explained how these digital ‘devices’ and how they interact with users,
platforms etc. can manufacture the social science and that we must focus our
efforts in understanding and describing the interactions between these
platforms, users, and the devices that they use in interacting within the
digital social sphere. This challenges the way we perceive the individual
beyond the humanistic conception of individual

Gerlitz and Rieder talked about how data platforms and their sources can
understand how users interact within Twitter. They analyzed 32 million
tweets between April 10 to April 14 2013 and the sources of the tweets that
were produced. They presented that these tweets were from different sources
(i.e. from iPhone, Android, Web etc.). They added that these sources are
automatedly managed or manually managed and they produce and do cross-
syndication of different content outside Twitter. Lastly, they argued that the
use of ‘digitally native’ data like likes and retweets can be further analyzed
via the source of the tweets.
In Gerlitz et al’s article, they discussed how different app-based third-party
applications of social media platforms, such as Facebook, Twitter,
Instagram, and SnapChat, relate and how they intensify, reduce, revive,
instruct, and transform the platforms they serve. Some of these third-party
applications use the ‘action grammars’ of the social media platforms they
base but some of them rework or recreate these ‘action grammars’ but these
applications are clear that they are not supported by the social media
platforms. Lastly, they argue that these third-party applications experiences
dominance and power via legal which controls these third-party
applications.

Plantin et al’s article have discussed the two school of thoughts, platform
studies and infrastructure studies. Infrastructure is more like impenetrable
and dictated by the owner of the software that individuals engage with. The
owners of these infrastructures dominate the users via control and
surveillance. Platforms, in contrasts with infrastructures, are more open and
able to innovate and create applications in for users to consume and develop.
Plantin et al argued that the combination of both schools of thought is
beneficial in understanding Web Applications like Facebook and Google, in
which Facebook is being ‘infrastructuralized’ and Google being
‘platformitalized’.
Spilker et al’s study talks about how Twitch.tv can be still explained through
different concepts of old media studies and also challenges through
understanding how and why Twitch.tv users switch from different streams.
According to them, there are two dimensions when users switch to a stream,
first is the ‘spatial switching’ which is between bigger streams and smaller
streams (the long of community) and the ‘affective switching’ which
concerns the passive and active forms of participation of users, because
some users do not really engage within the streams and just leave the
streams on the background while they do other things.
Ford et al’s paper discussed on how to understand computer-mediated
communication in larger viewers in Twitch.tv. They argue that the content
of the CMC in Twitch chat exhibits shorthanded and bricolage (less
authentic) texts. According to them, the messages are shorter due to the use
of Twitch emotes that portray some kind of emotion or reaction towards the
gameplay or streamer and the messages less authentic due to the fact that
people treat their messages as memes via copy pastas and word play by
previous copy pastas. But, unlike they hypothesized, the massive chats did
not lessen the unique voices.

The paper overviewed journal articles that pertains to live-streaming,

gaming, and Twitch.tv. The goal of the paper was to contribute in creating a
research toolkit for researchers when it comes to livestreaming. They
gathered 47 research and codified them by what method and the object of
the study. They identified three patterns: (1) technically supported studies
those who uses public data via APIs, (2) technically agnostic studies which
uses the streaming platform to communicate, (3) lastly technically
challenging studies. According to them, the last pattern is poorly supported
by the existing technical landscape of game streaming research.
The paper discussed how Twitch.tv acts as a ‘third place’ that instigates
sociability in the Internet sphere. By using the concepts of ‘third place’,
sense of community, and hot and cool media. They analyzed interviews of
12 streamers and 4 viewers. The paper shows how important interactions
are, since this is how viewers identify themselves to the streamer. Viewers
also have huge impacts, as regulars and moderators encourage or instigate
sociability to newcomers and filing the role of the streamer. Lastly, to
maintain meaningful interactions streamers use subscriber-only chat yet
discourages openness, and they also use the idea of subdivision.

This article explores the idea of affective labor as a way for streamers to
engage to the viewers and maintain their attention to keep on watching and
monetize their ‘gameplay’. By interviewing UK, US, Poland and Germany-
based streamers, they discovered that these streamers maintain a character
in a way that captivates viewers in watching their streams more, though this
character requires them to act since the character will somehow base on
what the viewers want. By this way, they monetize their streams by
subscription of viewers, solicitation of donations, and they can negotiate
with different brands to sponsor their streams.
 Comments

Venturini et al's article should be taken as an

invitation and a somehow crash course on how
Digital Sociology must be approached in
consideration with their experiences.This article
gives a 'clear' direction on what we can expect
from Digital Sociology as a field of study. I must
also be cautious on the warnings heeded by
Venturini et al and must also consider that the
concept of 'the more the merrier' for data does not
apply.

Latour et al.'s article helps to give a perspective on

how to methodologically navigate through the
digital data sets that are readily available, or to be
cleaned and be used. It sheds light that structures
and collectives are not necessary for us to create
meaning within the data set but create a clear
descriptiion of what is inside our data.
Geertz and Weltervrede's chapter creates
complications which needs to be taken into
consideration when using ANT as a theoretical
framework. As the methodological considerations
of ANT scholars have presented some
complications of bias which needs to be taken into
account. *If following the medium, it does not
capsulate the social accomplishments of users, if
following the actors then we will be leaning to
clean data
This is a good introduction for the Methodology
and this really relates to Gerlitz and Weltvrede's
article but their's extends the ideas of Ruppert et
al's

Looking into the source should be taken into

account
It is a very good article to consider when it comes
to understanding how these third-party apps
intensify, reduce, revive, instruct, and transform
the different functions of the platform they base
their applications with. This is also a good way to
understand how different applications, API, etc.
can reimagine the experience of users using the
same platform.

This article serves a way to view applications not

as binaries whether infrastructure or platform but
rather platform based application can
'infrastructuralize' and infrastracture based
applications can 'platformitalize'
I actually like this though some streams gives
more opportunity to the audiences to create
content via APIs like emotes, TTS, and etc which
brings in more participation and engagement to the
Twitch user but nonetheless a great idea.
It as good start-up to add the ideas of Twitch
emotes as memes, how APIs help with these
concepts of bricolage and shorthanding.

I disagree with the last pattern that the paper said,

since Digital Metthods Intitative have somehow
shed light on this with different social media
platform/infrastructures. This can be a way for us
to somehow interject the different tools that DMI
have given in the course of their publications.
I like how they managed to shed light in the
interactions and experiences of streamers and
viewers when it comes to fostering communities
and also creating and maintaing meaningful
interaction. Goes against Stortein et al.'s study.

I think Woodcock and Johnson's paper shows the

duality of Twitch, in the case of Hamilton et al's
study which sees Twitch.tv as building
community, this article shows how streaming as a
labor and what is required to monetize their
gameplay. I think this shows more diversity within
the literature and I can contribute via showing that
the economy of Twitch.tv is not just about how
streamers 'create content' but also looking for other
contents via APIs, other videos and etc.
 Use for Thesis

This can be used in the introduction

as a way for us to introduce how
Digital Sociology must be presented

It is a methodological guide in
navigating through data sets so this
must be taken into account when
looking ways to methodologically
study any digital data.
Methodology
 Methodology

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