Content-creator collaborations are a widespread strategy for enhancing digital viewership and revenue. While existing research has explored the efficacy of collaborations, few have looked at inequities in collaborations, particularly from the perspective of the supply and demand of attention. Leveraging 42,376 videos and 6,117,441 comments from YouTube (across 150 channels and 3 games), this study examines gender inequality in collaborative environments. Utilizing Shapley value, a tool from cooperative game theory, results reveal dominant in-group collaborations based on in-game affordances. However, audience responses are aligned across games, reflecting symmetric biases across the gaming communities, with comments focusing more on peripherals than actual gameplay for women. We find supply-side asymmetries exist along with demand-side symmetries. Our results engage with the larger literature on digital and online biases, highlighting how genre and affordances moderate gendered collaboration, the direction of inequality, and contributing a general framework to quantify synergy across collaborations.

翻译：内容创作者协作是提升数字媒体观看量与收入的普遍策略。现有研究虽已探讨协作的效能，却鲜有关注协作中的不平等现象，尤其从注意力供需视角出发。本研究利用来自YouTube（涵盖150个频道与3款游戏）的42,376个视频及6,117,441条评论，考察协作环境中的性别不平等问题。通过运用合作博弈论中的夏普利值工具，研究发现基于游戏内可供性的同群体协作占据主导地位。然而，受众反应在不同游戏间呈现一致性，反映出游戏社群间对称的偏见现象——针对女性创作者的评论更聚焦于外围特征而非实际游戏操作。我们揭示了供给侧的非对称性与需求侧的对称性并存。研究结果与数字及在线偏见领域的宏观文献形成对话，阐明了游戏类型与可供性如何调节性别化协作的方向与不平等形态，并提出一个量化跨协作协同效应的通用框架。