Going Live.
Exploring live digital technologies and live streaming practices.
Milieux Institute, Concordia University
1515 Sainte-Catherine street west, room 11.705
October 10, 2018
Image from Flickr
The Pre-Conference
Interdisciplinary exploration of liveness
9:00 am - 5:00pm
Registration from 8:30am
As a pre-conference event affiliated with the Association of Internet Researchers (AoIR) annual conference, this full-day workshop will bring together game studies scholars and social media researchers to discuss the increasing popularity of live digital technologies. These technologies include features on social media sites such as Facebook Live, standalone smartphone apps (e.g., Periscope), and websites dedicated to live streaming, such as the gaming platform Twitch.tv.
Although live streaming has been possible for many years (e.g. Senft, 2008), the evolution of recording devices, data transfer speeds, mobile apps, and other digital technologies has contributed to a recent proliferation of live media. Live platforms encourage spontaneous sharing but controversial incidents raise questions about what should be shared in a live context. Live streaming game platforms showcase modes of self-presentation and self-promotion (Consalvo & Altizer, 2017), which social media influencers also adopt when broadcasting content to adoring fans (Abidin, 2016). Gamers and influencers alike benefit from the commercialization of these practices, generating revenue from brand promotion and boosting attention to advertisements. Clearly, live streaming and live digital technologies have social, political, economic, and cultural impacts. However, research into these areas is still developing and there have been few opportunities for interdisciplinary dialogue among scholars researching live streaming.
We invite you to tackle these topics with us at this pre-conference workshop, taking place at Concordia University’s cutting-edge Milieux Institute for Arts, Culture and Technology. We encourage participation from a range of scholars, from graduate students to early career researchers and established academics. If you are an AoIR member, please register through the AoIR conference website to reserve your place. If you are not an AoIR member or if you are not attending the AoIR conference, please register through this website.
Call for Papers
Work-in-Progress Papers and Feedback Sessions
The day will also include paper sessions for presenting and receiving feedback about works-in-progress. We invite abstracts from scholars researching live streaming and live digital technologies across a range of topics, including but not limited to:
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Gaming and esports
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Platform infrastructures, algorithms, and automation
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Communities, practices, and audiences
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Microcelebrity and self-branding
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Political economies and labour
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Ephemeral and everyday media
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Data, policy, privacy, and governance
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Transnational liveness
Selected presenters will have the chance to submit their work-in-progress papers prior to the workshop for circulation to attendees. If you are interested in presenting, please submit an abstract of 250 words along with your name, title, affiliation and a brief bio (50 words) to goingliveconf@gmail.com by June 29, 2018.
Reserve Your Place
If you are attending the AoIR conference, you must register through the conference registration website. If you are not attending AoIR, please register by clicking below.
Image from Flickr
Keynote Speech
Photo by Bryce Vickmark, http://vickmark.com.
T.L. Taylor, Professor of Comparative Media Studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Professor Taylor is a qualitative sociologist (Brandeis University, 2000) who has focused on internet and game studies for over two decades. Her research explores the interrelations between culture and technology in online leisure environments.
Her book Raising the Stakes: E-Sports and the Professionalization of Computer Gaming (MIT Press, 2012) chronicles the rise of e-sports and professional computer gaming. She is also the author of Play Between Worlds: Exploring Online Game Culture (MIT Press, 2006) which used her multi-year ethnography of EverQuest to explore issues related to massively multiplayer online games. Ethnography and Virtual Worlds: A Handbook of Method, her co-authored book on doing ethnographic research in online multi-user worlds, was published by Princeton University Press (2012).
Her book about game live-streaming – Watch Me Play: Twitch and the Rise of Game Live Streaming(Princeton University Press) – will be out in September.
She also serves as Director of Research for AnyKey, an organization dedicated to supporting and developing fair and inclusive esports.