Gaming Streamers as Intermediaries: A Multi-Level Intermediation Framework across Self, Community, and Platformised Industry

Abstract

Gaming streamers have become important actors in the communication of digital games, operating at the intersection of play, community interaction, and platform-based economies. Existing research has typically examined streaming through separate lenses of identity work, audience engagement, or platformisation, leaving their interrelations undertheorised. This article develops a multi-level intermediation framework of game streaming that integrates insights from communicative figurations, deep mediatization, and research on game and creator cultures. It conceptualises streaming as a set of intermediation processes connecting self, community, and platformised industry across micro-, meso-, and macro-level dynamics. The analysis shows that intermediation emerges through cross-level dynamics rather than within isolated domains. At the micro-meso level, practices of self-presentation stabilise participation while audience feedback shapes identity performance. At the meso-macro level, community interaction is rendered measurable, transforming participation into visibility and economic value while simultaneously enabling contestation. At the micro-macro interface, platform governance and regulation impose structurally asymmetrical conditions that require creators to be hyper-flexible and leave the vulnerable to pre-structuring conditions. By foregrounding these dynamics, the conceptual framework provides an analytical tool that guides and structures future empirical research on streamers and streaming in digital gamevironments.