• Wattpad as a resource for literary studies. Quantitative and qualitative examples of the importance of digital social reading and readers’ comments in the margins

    Author(s):
    Gerhard Lauer, Federico Pianzola (see profile) , Simone Rebora
    Date:
    2020
    Group(s):
    Digital Humanists
    Subject(s):
    Digital humanities, Culture--Study and teaching, Culture--Data processing, Literature
    Item Type:
    Article
    Tag(s):
    digital social reading, social reading, wattpad, Digital culture, Computational culture studies, 21st-century digital culture
    Permanent URL:
    http://dx.doi.org/10.17613/d79n-cw69
    Abstract:
    The end of deep reading is a commonplace in public debates, whenever societies talk about youth, books, and the digital age. In contrast to this, we show for the first time and in detail, how intensively young readers write and comment literary texts at an unprecedented scale. We present several analyses of how fiction is transmitted through the social reading platform Wattpad, one of the largest platforms for user-generated stories, including novels, fanfiction, humour, classics, and poetry. By mixed quantitative and qualitative methods and scalable reading we scrutinise texts and comments on Wattpad, what themes are preferred in 13 languages, what role does genre play for readers behaviour, and what kind of emotional engagement is prevalent when young readers share stories. Our results point out the rise of a global reading culture in youth reading besides national preferences for certain topics and genres, patterns of reading engagement, aesthetic values and social interaction. When reading Teen Fiction social-bonding (affective interaction) is prevalent, when reading Classics social-cognitive interaction (collective intelligence) is prevalent. An educational outcome suggests that readers who engage in Teen Fiction learn to read Classics and to judge books not only in direct emotional response to character’s behaviour, but focusing more on contextualised interpretation of the text.
    Metadata:
    xml
    Published as:
    Journal article     Show details
    Pub. DOI:
    https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0226708
    Publisher:
    Public Library of Science (PLoS)
    Pub. Date:
    2020-1-15
    Journal:
    PLOS ONE
    Volume:
    15
    Issue:
    1
    ISSN:
    1932-6203
    Status:
    Published
    Last Updated:
    3 years ago
    License:
    Attribution
    Share this:

    Downloads

    Item Name: pdf pianzola-et-al.-wattpad-as-a-resource-for-literary-studies.-quanti.pdf
      Download View in browser
    Activity: Downloads: 391

    Back to Deposits