Professional gamers on Twitter/X: tweeting for change

Professional gamers play esports as an occupation and income source. As a group, limited attention has been paid to professional gamers and their online behaviour on social media platforms such as X. The purpose of this paper is to explore the reasons (or motivations) of professional gamers to use X from a Uses and Gratifications Theory (UGT) perspective. This study used exploratory and qualitative methods to analyse 23,356 tweets of South African professional gamers taken from their X accounts using NVivo. This allows for research on the use of X in another cultural context. Social interaction, information sharing, and promotion were identified as motives, but in this study, the motives of personal opinions, entrepreneurship, and gaming issues were also identified. The use of tweets to highlight causes enables professional gamers to use the platform to impact the broader gaming community, society and media.