Virtual Streamer Performance and Audience Engagement: Cross-Platform Success Dynamics

The innovative field of virtual streaming represents a convergence of advanced technology, digital entertainment, and complex social dynamics, where virtual streamers engage audiences across platforms like YouTube, Twitch, TikTok, and newer live-streaming services. This phenomenon merges cutting-edge motion capture technology, natural language processing, and avatar-based interaction with psychological principles of social presence, parasocial relationships, and digital identity formation to craft immersive experiences. Despite rapid industry growth, generating significant economic impact and billions of views, a critical understanding of the technological, psychological, and sociological elements that affect success in various streaming environments is still emerging. With AI-driven content generation, real-time human-computer interaction, social psychology of virtual communities, and platform-specific audience behavior central to this exploration, there's a pressing need for more in-depth interdisciplinary research into these success factors.

This Research Topic aims to build a thorough understanding of the diverse success factors influencing virtual streaming across multiple platforms through rigorous interdisciplinary investigations spanning computer science, psychology, and sociology. By examining critical technological elements, human factors, social dynamics, and interaction design principles, this research seeks to uncover what drives successful virtual streamer performance irrespective of platform constraints. Viewed through the lenses of human-computer interaction, AI systems, media psychology, social cognitive theory, and cross-platform digital technologies, this work intends to deliver insights into effective virtual presence creation, strategies for optimizing audience engagement, and techniques for sustainable content generation within virtual communities. The findings are expected to enrich theoretical frameworks on human-AI collaboration in entertainment contexts, advance understanding of digital social interaction, and offer pragmatic guidelines for technology developers, content creators, and platform designers within the immersive digital media ecosystem.

This Research Topic is open to interdisciplinary contributions examining virtual streamer success from computer science, psychology, and sociology viewpoints across different platforms. We are looking for empirical studies, theoretical advances, and methodological innovations exploring themes such as:

- AI-powered real-time avatar animation and facial expression systems
- Natural language processing for cross-platform audience interactions
- Computer vision applications in motion capture and gesture recognition
- Data analytics and machine learning in performance measurement and audience prediction
- Human-computer interaction design for enhanced virtual presence
- Technical infrastructure needs and optimization strategies by platform
- Psychological and social factors in virtual persona development and audience attachment
- Social presence theory applications in virtual streaming environments
- Digital identity formation and authentic self-presentation in virtual contexts
- Community building and social dynamics within virtual streamer ecosystems
- Cultural and cross-cultural differences in virtual interaction patterns
- Media psychology frameworks for understanding parasocial relationships
- Behavioral psychology in streaming engagement and retention
- Sociological analysis of virtual influencer impact on digital culture
- Communication studies perspectives on virtual-mediated interaction
- Comparative analyses of streamer strategies across platforms and cultures
- Ethical considerations in AI-mediated entertainment and digital relationships

We welcome diverse article types including empirical research, theoretical works, reviews, and case studies addressing these themes.

Article types and fees

This Research Topic accepts the following article types, unless otherwise specified in the Research Topic description:

• Brief Research Report
• Conceptual Analysis
• Curriculum, Instruction, and Pedagogy
• Data Report
• Editorial
• FAIR² Data
• FAIR² DATA Direct Submission
• General Commentary
• Hypothesis and Theory
• ... View all formats

Articles that are accepted for publication by our external editors following rigorous peer review incur a publishing fee charged to Authors, institutions, or funders.

Article types

This Research Topic accepts the following article types, unless otherwise specified in the Research Topic description:

• Brief Research Report
• Conceptual Analysis
• Curriculum, Instruction, and Pedagogy
• Data Report
• Editorial
• FAIR² Data
• FAIR² DATA Direct Submission
• General Commentary
• Hypothesis and Theory
• Methods
• Mini Review
• Opinion
• Original Research
• Perspective
• Policy and Practice Reviews
• Registered Report
• Review
• Systematic Review
• Technology and Code

Keywords: virtual streamers, human-AI interaction, digital avatars, parasocial relationships, social pressure, media psychology, virtual communities, cross-platform engagement

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.