Narrowcasting Desire: Streaming, Modding, and the Cybernetic Shift in Digital Communication

Abstrak

This study examines how digital communication in participatory cultures has shifted from linear broadcasting to adaptive, feedback-driven systems. Using a qualitative netnographic approach, it analyzes the Skyrim modding ecosystem, particularly the Immersive and Adult mod collection on NexusMods and its circulation across YouTube and Twitch. Drawing from the frameworks of cybernetics, narrowcasting, and platform capitalism, the research explores how creators, audiences, and platforms form self-regulating loops of information, affect, and governance. The findings reveal that communication within these communities functions as a cybernetic network, where feedback structures participation and adaptation; as narrowcasting, where content circulates among niche publics defined by shared taste and identity; and within platform capitalism, where visibility and engagement are quantified and monetized. Together, these dynamics illustrate how digital creativity operates as both collaborative and regulated, sustained by user interaction yet constrained by infrastructural control. The Skyrim modding community thus represents a microcosm of contemporary media convergence: an ecosystem that is recursive, affective, and increasingly shaped by algorithmic feedback and platform governance.