Contextual governance & androcentric hegemony on Twitch.tv

Twitch’s Terms of Service (ToS) and Community Guidelines (CG) policies forbid discriminatory behavior and harassment, but many streamers from marginalized communities have been victimized while their harassers go unpunished. These inconsistencies in how safety violations are managed prompted the author(s) to perform a two-stage analysis of Twitch’s platform governance strategies to understand the relationship between platform governance and androcentric hegemony. The first stage included an inductive thematic analysis of ToS and CG documents, leading to the second analysis of two case studies that specify inconsistencies in policy enforcement dependent on opaque contextual exceptions. Ultimately, the authors provide evidence of contextual exceptions for safety, edgy humor, attire, and nudity which demonstrate how Twitch’s inconsistent governance reifies androcentric hegemony that benefits all men, rather than geek masculinity that largely prioritizes white men.