ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the characteristics and difficulties of analyzing comments on gaming videos by highlighting the specific case of Let’s Play videos on YouTube. Xenia Zeiler proposes the use of coding as one possible method for researching the vast and mainly textual data. The method can be used to systematize and sort the often extensive content, and thus systematically prepare and initialize the analysis of research questions related to religion, and any given other topic. Xenia Zeiler discusses how and why the threefold approach of in vivo coding, axial coding, and selective coding is significant to the analysis of Let’s Play comments and applies the different methodical steps to a case study, namely, the comments on YouTube Let’s Plays of Asura’s Wrath. This coding method for comments on gaming videos highlights three aspects of gaming and religion that have been little researched so far: (1) gaming videos, in particular Let’s Plays, (2) global contexts, and (3) the recipients’ discourse in cultural “gamevironments.”
