It’s not news that Gen Z and millennials are using social media platforms to get their news nowadays. No longer just a place to watch your favorite steamer play League of Legends for 10 hours, Twitch is the latest social media platform joining the likes of X and TikTok as a destination for young voters seeking political news and commentary.
Most often used by gamers to broadcast live video game competitions and interact with fans, the political power of Twitch first gained mainstream recognition in 2020 when Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez streamed the hit game Among Us, now one of the platform’s most-viewed streams of all time. Since then, the platform has become a political hub for young voters who feel at home in the fast-paced casual world of Twitch rather than more traditional news outlets. With 2.7M followers on Twitch, Hasan Piker, who streams eight hours a day, seven days a week, along with other political streamers like Gremloe and SeanDaBlack, are filling the void of cable news and breaking down politics and election updates to a young audience.
Only about 30% of Gen Z currently get their news from cable news, with 63% preferring to turn to social media at least once a week for news. Despite their unpredictable nature, political parties have taken notice of the influence social media platforms now wield and have been upping their efforts to court creators in the hopes of engaging with more young voters. In July, 100 conservative influencers were invited to attend the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, while last month’s Democratic National Convention in Chicago opened its doors to 200 social media content creators to tap into their online audiences.
Many Twitch creators will stream for hours at a time, and as they’re streaming, they talk. On a recent live broadcast, Piker covered Rep. Ilhan Omar’s primary win, the latest campaign polls, the war in Gaza and a ruling in Arizona that a fetus can be referred to as an unborn child, according to NBC News. The long-form nature of the stream allows time and space for nuance and detail to be discussed, unlike platforms like TikTok, with the result being fully-engaged viewers. The chat feature on Twitch, which runs alongside whatever is streaming, is active—whether a few dozen people or a few thousand—allowing for back and forth exchanges.
If you’re going to tune in to someone talking for eight hours a day, they’ve got to be engaging. As a personality-oriented platform, Twitch is a way for people to get political commentary from someone they trust or are entertained by. However, since it is a live streaming platform, it is also virtually impossible to fact-check or regulate content, with many alt-right and Q-anon conspiracy theorists also spreading their beliefs using Twitch. So, as with everything on the internet, take it with a grain of salt.
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