“From my living room to yours”: Theorizing the live streaming phenomenon in social media

Abstract

Over the last few years, the most popular social media platforms have incorporated the possibility for users to create, share, and watch live videos. In so-called ‘lives’, musicians, politicians, influencers and ordinary people alike broadcast content with varying degrees of improvisation and fluctuating production efforts, often from the intimate space of their domestic environments. This article aims to critically position the emergence of this format within the context of the culture of connectivity, and to offer some initial theoretical notes for the understanding of this phenomenon that has acquired new visibility due to the recent need for social distancing. Here, I identify exemplary types of live-streaming videos — which I designate as musical, conversational, instructive, speech, and companionship-based. Then, I characterize as the central features of contemporary live broadcasts their immediacy, apparent authenticity — which in turn results from their relative unpredictability, but also from efforts in producing a sense of spontaneity, intimacy and transparency — and the sense of shared experiencing.