Lost in the Crowd: How Group Size and Content Moderation Shape User Engagement in Live Streaming.

This article investigates how increases in group size affect user engagement on synchronous live streaming platforms, focusing on Twitch's Raid function, which causes an exogenous influx of viewers. Analyzing chat data from over 7,000 Twitch playbacks using difference-in-differences and mediation models, the study finds that larger group sizes reduce engagement among existing commenters, primarily due to increased topic incoherence and heightened emotional intensity (comment polarity) in chats. The research further reveals that bot moderators are more effective at mitigating topic incoherence during large raids, while human moderators better manage emotional volatility when incoming groups are smaller. These findings highlight a congestion effect in real-time digital interactions and suggest that flexible moderation strategies are essential for sustaining user engagement and fostering constructive communication on live streaming platforms.