I watched much of the Convention’s official feed on Twitch. The viewership was about 70 for the first two nights, 140 during the third, and 230 on the last one. For reference, pro-Harris streamers in the Center such as imreallyimportant typically garnered about 300 viewers, while party critic Hasan Piker garnered about 51,000 viewers, though that reflects their built-in audiences more. While I can’t really offer any points of comparison with YouTube, I can attest about 2/3 of the official feed’s chat was flooded with pro-Palestinian and anti-police emotes, a sign of who tends to dominate political spaces there. Almost none of it was related to the content of the speeches, or of the issues that polling consistently reveals are at the top of voters’ minds (such as inflation, jobs, housing, healthcare and immigration).
Caveat: the chat was in emote-mode only, and textual discussion (and even emoji) were not allowed. Also, the only other archived VOD was the 2016 feed, while the channel’s bio only gave the date of the 2020 DNC.
I watched much of the Convention’s official feed on Twitch. The viewership was about 70 for the first two nights, 140 during the third, and 230 on the last one. For reference, pro-Harris streamers in the Center such as imreallyimportant typically garnered about 300 viewers, while party critic Hasan Piker garnered about 51,000 viewers, though that reflects their built-in audiences more. While I can’t really offer any points of comparison with YouTube, I can attest about 2/3 of the official feed’s chat was flooded with pro-Palestinian and anti-police emotes, a sign of who tends to dominate political spaces there. Almost none of it was related to the content of the speeches, or of the issues that polling consistently reveals are at the top of voters’ minds (such as inflation, jobs, housing, healthcare and immigration).
Caveat: the chat was in emote-mode only, and textual discussion (and even emoji) were not allowed. Also, the only other archived VOD was the 2016 feed, while the channel’s bio only gave the date of the 2020 DNC.