StoryChat: Designing a Narrative-Based Viewer Participation Tool for Live Streaming Chatrooms

Title of the Paper

StoryChat: Designing a Narrative-Based Viewer Participation Tool for Live Streaming Chatrooms

Paper Information

• Domain: Human-Computer Interaction, Live Streaming, Community Engagement
• Keywords: Live streaming, narrative design, user participation, community management, online behavior, positive interaction, visual narrative, behavioral intervention, digital communities, content moderation

Research Background and Issues

• Identified Problems or Challenges:

  • While viewer comment tools on live streaming platforms can foster interaction, anonymity and the sheer volume of comments often encourage negative behaviors (e.g., harmful or abusive comments).
  • Current streaming platforms primarily rely on reactive management approaches, either manual or automated, which only address negative content after it has been posted, making it difficult to fundamentally change user behavior.
  • Manual moderation struggles to efficiently handle large volumes of comments and may lead to high workloads and emotional stress for moderators.

• Importance:

  • Negative content reduces viewer engagement and community belonging, while toxic environments undermine positive behaviors and communication among viewers.
  • Exploring proactive management methods can help mitigate the impact of negative behaviors more effectively while encouraging positive participation within the community.

• Research Motivation and Related Work:

  • Limited research has explored the impact of proactive management methods on user behavior, such as using narrative design to encourage positive interaction.
  • Narratives, particularly visual narratives, have been shown to significantly stimulate empathy and reduce psychological resistance to negative behaviors.
  • Building on prior studies, this paper proposes a visual narrative-based participation tool aimed at leveraging narrative intervention for community management.

Solution

• Method or Solution:

  • A tool named StoryChat is proposed, which uses dynamic graphical narratives to reflect the sentiment of real-time chat comments, aiming to promote positive comments and foster a sense of community belonging.
  • In implementation, StoryChat visualizes the emotional tone of comments as changes in a storyline, allowing viewers to "see" the chat environment and influence the narrative by sending positive comments.

• Innovations:

  • Integrating visual narrative and behavioral intervention to introduce proactive community management in the context of live streaming.
  • Embedding emotional resonance and intuitive graphical symbols into narrative design, encouraging viewers to consider the social impact behind negative comments.
  • Creating an interactive story where viewers can influence its development through community actions, thereby motivating participation and interaction.

• Implementation Steps and Key Technologies:

  1. User-Centered Design Process:
     • Low-fidelity prototype workshops: Testing user interest in narrative scenarios.
     • High-fidelity user surveys: Refining design based on user feedback.
     • Dynamic narrative development: Final optimization of narrative animations (e.g., interactions between the main character, a bear, and ghost symbols representing negative comments).
  2. System Integration Development:
     • Building the tool using Node.js and Vue.js frameworks, embedding Twitch platform APIs to access real-time chat data.
     • Defining standards for negative comments, setting real-time comment filtering mechanisms, and dynamically adjusting narrative trigger thresholds.
  3. Experimental Study:
     • Simulating a Twitch live streaming environment for small-scale experiments to test the tool's effectiveness in promoting user engagement and positive behavior.

Research Outcomes

• Specific Results:

  • StoryChat significantly encouraged viewers to send positive comments, with responsive comments to negative ones increasing by 256%.
  • Viewers reported that visual narratives enhanced their emotional connection with streamers and other viewers, boosting their sense of community belonging.
  • Demonstrated that narrative design can improve the atmosphere of real-time chat environments and inspire positive behaviors.

• Advantages Over Existing Solutions:

  • Compared to traditional comment filtering mechanisms, StoryChat focuses more on transforming behaviors positively rather than merely removing negative comments.
  • By employing a non-intrusive design, it incentivizes users to participate in chats without triggering resistance associated with coercive moderation methods.

• Experiment and Evaluation Results:

  • Usability scores indicated that the visual narrative design enhanced the appeal of the participation tool.
  • Surveys and interviews revealed that StoryChat’s graphical narrative design effectively improved users’ sense of community belonging.

• Limitations and Future Directions:

  • Limitations:
    • Experiments were conducted in controlled environments, leaving the tool’s long-term effectiveness in large-scale live streaming communities untested.
    • Fixed narrative structures may lead to user fatigue over extended usage periods.
    • Limited capability to address more complex or targeted negative behaviors (e.g., malicious attacks against LGBTQ+ groups).
  • Future Directions:
    • Develop more diverse and dynamic narrative models to adapt to different community cultures and content.
    • Explore ways to combine human moderators with automated tools to enhance management effectiveness.
    • Investigate the tool’s performance in marginalized communities (e.g., women, ethnic minorities).
    • Incorporate more specific social issues (e.g., racial discrimination or gender harassment) into the narratives to expand the tool’s application scenarios.