Room with a viewership: visibility work & Twitch.tv in the domestic context

This paper argues for the domestic worksites of marginalized game streamers as a crucial site for understanding the politics of visibility work on platforms. Twitch.tv stands out as Amazon's world-leading platform for live video entertainment. Through ethnographic interactions with Twitch creators (n = 12), I clarify the challenges marginalized individuals face in livestreaming's platformization of game cultures. While streaming provides opportunities for creative self-expression and shields against hostile gaming communities, it also relocates streamers' precarities before audiences to the sensitive enclaves of domestic space. Consequently, Twitch streamers must delicately balance self-presentation and discretion due to the looming threat of over-exposure in a historically unfriendly gaming culture. By exploring these dual experiences from the standpoint of vulnerable creators, this paper offers insights into the intricate strategies of visibility management in social media work. It also contributes to the ongoing discourse on the construction of online presence, extending into feminist theories of domestic work and the social reproduction of online game environments.