Amazon Science recently wrote a piece profiling me and the research that I did as a Twitch intern during Summer 2020. In collaboration with Twitch data scientist Sanjay Kairam, we launched a project to survey and assess the needs and experiences of Twitch moderators. Below is an excerpt from the article, as well as a link to the full piece.

“Cullen started with the basics: how moderators came to the role, and how streamers would find them (every Twitch channel has the opportunity to select its own moderators). Then she got into how they worked with the channel creators, how they helped develop norms and standards for behavior within their channels, and how they actively worked to guide the community around those ideas.

Cullen was also interested in what tools moderators wanted or needed, and how they responded to both positive and negative behavior within their channels.

“That led us to think about new resources that could be created to help moderators think about their roles and feel a greater sense of community — not just within their channel, but throughout Twitch as a whole,” says Cullen.

Cullen’s findings were put to direct use at Twitch: “Amanda’s work shed a lot of really detailed light on moderator needs, which has propelled us to build better tools for our moderators,” Kairam said.

This support potentially had some very positive knock-on effects for moderators.

“A lot of what Amanda’s work helped to unpack was that moderators are playing different roles within a channel. It really got the team thinking about how we could fine tune the experience for different types of roles that moderators play — so that they can work more effectively in each of those roles,” Kairam said.”

How one intern’s research had real-world impact for Twitch moderators.