A Study On Pan-entertainment Live Streaming From The Perspective Of User Based On The Play Theory Of Mass Communication

A large number of live users has been attracted since the rapid development of live streaming in the past three years.Up to December 2017,there were 422 million live users in China.With more and more live-streaming platforms developing into pan-entertainment live-streaming platforms,the entertainment function of live-streaming platform becomes more and more prominent,paying more attention to users' entertainment experience.As a result,there comes many negative problems.How to get a healthy and sustainable development of live-streaming industry in the new era of network communication is a problem needed to be solved.The play theory of mass communication mainly focuses on the audience's subjective experience of media participation,and it has an important exposition to the entertainment function of media,which is of great value to live-streaming research.So this paper mainly studies the features of live users and the users' needs of livestreaming participation from the users' perspective,with the help of the play theory of mass communication.Then,specific development proposals of live streaming are put forward after the reflection on negative problems of live streaming.Contents of this paper mainly consist of the following four parts:Firstly,the play theory of mass communication and the rise of pan-entertainment live streaming.The core idea of the play theory of mass communication is “communication is game”,focusing on individual subjective experience.In this chapter,three main conceptions are explained firstly: social control and convergence choice,work and play,self and ego.Then it is considered that the live streaming is “game” to some extent from the perspective of the play theory of communication after an analysis of the current situation of panentertainment live streaming.Secondly,the analysis of live users from the perspective of the play theory of mass communication.The play theory of mass communication emphasizes the autonomy of audience and the influence of the media on audience depends more on audience's attitude towards the media.This chapter is about characteristics of live audience and streamer analyzed by the three main conceptions from the perspective of the play theory of mass communication.The difference between the streamer and audience is that the former participates in the live streaming with utilitarianism,streamer treats it as “work” and hopes to gain benefits,and the latter who treats it as “game” aims to get happiness.Thirdly,pan-entertainment live streaming meets live users' needs.In this chapter,it is about to explore live users' needs of participating in live streaming by the exploration of “Feng Timo” case,some users' interviews,the author's participation in live streaming.With the help of Maslow's hierarchy of needs,it needs to be elaborated of the specific needs of live audience and streamer.On this basis,a reflection is given on the negative problems of live streaming's over satisfying users' needs,including “amusement to death”,audience indulgence,irrational acts of reward.Fourthly,development proposal of pan-entertainment live streaming.For live users,they need to be rational and improve media literacy.For live-streaming platforms,it is necessary to build a live-streaming ecology with high quality contents.The development of the live-streaming platform should be based on the content as the cornerstone,the user as the foundation,and the profit as the goal.