Gagen and Cook’s description of the concept of liveness on Second Life gave insight into the difficulties in
defining a virtual act as ‘live’ due to the constraints of virtual space. They touched upon a particular view from
user Anya Ristow who described the problem of bots in Second Life, and felt that in a ‘live’ concert the
presence of bots meant “the concert was not the live, communal event it made itself out to be but rather a
fraud” (Gagen and Cook 198). This concept led their argument that to present music live on Second Life “is to
enter a kind of social contract” which is determined not only by the performer but by the listener/audience
(Gagen and Cook 199). In current day, acts of live streaming such as Bryce Xavier on live.ly, bots continue to
be present in audiences. The question I’m interested in is: does the presence of bots in the audience impact
how we define live streaming?
Within this framework of the social contract we can separately define the roles of the live streamer/influencer
and the audience. The influencer’s role is to produce content, and the audience’s role is to listen and react to
the content. Using the earlier framework we studied in class from Crawford, the audience is engaging in
reciprocal listening. It is the presence of the audience’s reciprocal listening which gives a live streamer their
influence. Live streaming tools such as live.ly, instagram live, and twitch show how many listeners are tuned
in and users can make comments which will appear publicly in real time. This information directly impacts the
content produced by the live streamer. In the article about Bryce Xavier, we see various ways in which users
can react and even pay money to an influencer for the chance to for their comments to be acknowledged and
reciprocated (Hess).
I think a really interesting way of looking at bots in this respect is again through Crawford’s framework, but
this time as delegated listening. In class we talked a lot about delegated listening in the context of corporations
delegating interns to respond to twitter messages, AKA delegating for the producer. I instead want to think of
how bots exist as delegated listening for the audience. If the role of the audience is to react to the content, then
can we think of bots as delegated listening from the audience? This would create an important difference in
how ‘live’ a live stream is. If the audience’s role is being delegated to a non-real person, then the interaction
may no longer fit inside of ‘real time’ because there is a non-real interaction occurring. While bots exist on
many social media platforms, they more heavily impact the act of live streaming because of the real time
implications. Reactions from bots can misshape how the live streamer perceives the audience and can therefore
affect the content. With no real time interaction, there can be no ‘live’ interaction, thus defeating the purpose
of the live stream.
Works Cited
Crawford, Kate. "Following You: Disciplines of Listening in Social Media." The Sound Studies
Reader. By Jonathan Sterne. London: Routledge, 2012. 79-90. Print.
Gagen, Justin, and Nicholas Cook. "Performing Live in Second Life." OXFORD HANDBOOK OF
MUSIC AND VIRTUALITY. By SHEILA WHITELEY. S.l.: OXFORD UNIV US, 2019. 191-209.
Print.
Hess, Amanda. "The Teenage Life, Streamed Live and for Profit." The New York Times. The New York
Times, 06 June 2017. Web. 05 Nov. 2019.
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