Growing from fringe to familiar

This study examines the live streaming platform of BLAST.tv and aims to understand what its relationship to Twitch, a Big Tech platform, is. In the digital age, these Big Tech platforms offer users various services that result in cultural production on these platforms. However, there are also smaller platforms operating on the periphery of a market offering services based on ideological differences with the mainstream platform. To study these complex microsystems effectively, platform studies offer an in-depth analysis of platforms from both a socio-economic, as well as, a techno-cultural approach. Within the academic field of platform studies, José van Dijck’s Culture of Connectivity (CoC) model lays the foundation for analysing a platform from six dimensions. These dimensions, which are based on Political Economy theory and Actor-Network Theory, upend the different power struggles surrounding a platform, while also showing how technology and users interact and shape each other. Van Dijck’s (2013) CoC model consists of the dimensions of technology, ownership, business model, governance, users/usage, and content. Additionally, a seventh dimension is used in this research to study a small platform like BLAST.tv. De Winkel’s (2023) fringe platform framework helps to understand whether BLAST.tv can be considered a fringe platform. Hence, the main research question that can be answered after the platform classification of BLAST.tv is How does the microsystem of BLAST.tv navigate the relationship with a bigger livestream platform as a fringe platform? To answer these questions, a platform analysis was conducted on the BLAST.tv platform. Based on previous research, the corpus of this thesis consists of the Terms of Usage (ToU) from BLAST.tv, the 2021 and 2022 public filings of BLAST ApS, as well as, information regarding BLAST’s ownership, and a walkthrough of the BLAST.tv platform as a new user. After doing a discourse analysis and an affordance analysis on the corpus, the findings showed that BLAST.tv cannot be classified as a fringe platform because the platform is creating an alternative user experience to that of Twitch. Moreover, BLAST.tv also cannot be considered a mainstream platform due to its size within the market. Therefore, the relationship that BLAST.tv has to navigate with Twitch is something that fits in between a fringe platform and a mainstream platform. The findings suggest that future research in the platform studies field will need to try and find a way to classify platforms that start as potential fringe platforms, but slowly create a new market from this ideological difference and offer an alternative experience from the Big Tech platforms.