Navigating Racial Discourses: Youth’s Use of Emotes on Twitch

• In Event: Transformative Digital Spaces: Disrupting Traditional Notions of Learning and Reimagining Educational Possibilities Through Social Media

Abstract

Objective

This study investigates how young people's digital activities on Twitch provide valuable contexts for understanding their everyday discursive practices. Specifically, we explore the racial discourses that emerge through youth engagement with racialized emotes on the Twitch platform. Emotes are pictorial representations that users appropriate in real-time chat during a Twitch livestream, enabling them to communicate or react to the stream's content (Olejniczak, 2015; Taylor, 2018). The study focuses on two racialized emotes, "CmonBruh" and "TriHard," which feature Black men. We explore the following research questions: 1) How do young people engage with emotes to reproduce and transform racial discourse on Twitch? 2) How do young people transform emotes to counter anti-Black discourse?

Theoretical Framework

We draw upon cultural-historical theories of learning (Cole, 1996; Engeström, 1987), which posit that learning occurs in everyday activity, mediated by social interaction and cultural tools. Further, we are informed by theories that describe a new communication ecology in today’s interconnected world, where learning is mediated by digital technologies and social media (Jenkins, 2016). These perspectives frame our understanding of youth's everyday media practices as they engage in the reproduction and contestation of racial discourses.

Methods & Analysis

Multiple data sources were triangulated, collected over 6 months, and engaged in the following types of data analysis: (1) chat logs and fieldnotes were inductively coded (Bogdan & Biklen, 1997); (2) discourse analysis of key events (Erickson, 2006); (3) multimodal analysis (Hull & Nelson, 2005) of digital artifacts; and (5) tabulations on online activities. Through these analyses, moments were examined to gain an understanding of youth’s discursive practices in relation to emotes.

Data

The study draws from 30 hours of public Twitch stream video data, chat logs, and 20 digital artifacts found across 3 digital platforms (YouTube, Twitter, and Reddit).

Findings

We provide evidence for how young people leverage emotes as symbolic tools through which individuals construct and negotiate their understandings of racial identities, stereotypes, and power dynamics (Nakamura, 2013). By employing emotes, young gamers actively reproduced and deconstructed hegemonic notions of race (Leonard, 2006) and shaped their ways of engaging with dominant discourse. This act of deploying emotes transforms symbols into active agents that reinforce or challenge social norms (Brock, 2010). Furthermore, the findings reveal how young people subverted and challenged anti-Black usages of the emotes “CmonBruh” and “Trihard.” This subversion can be seen as part of broader youth practices where digital media is used to challenge traditional power structures (Curwood & Gibbons, 2009). Twitch emotes, in particular, are racialized, highly contested, and discussed on various platforms such as Reddit, Twitter, and YouTube (Evans & Llano, 2023).

Significance

This study offers implications for understanding the discursive practices on live-streaming platforms, such as Twitch, in understanding how youth learn about race and reproduce and challenge racial ideologies in digital spaces. Specifically, how real-time discursive interactions between users and streamers create an environment where youth learn about race. We argue that the ingenious discursive practice of using emotes to convey meaning across a fast-paced environment encapsulates racialized meanings that move across digital platforms.

Author

• Sandra Jacobo, University of California - Berkeley