Modelling social readers: novel tools for addressing reception from online book reviews

Social reading sites offer an opportunity to capture a segment of readers’ responses to literature, while data-driven analysis of these responses can provide new critical insight into how people ‘read’. Posts discussing an individual book on the social reading site, Goodreads , are referred to as ‘reviews’, and consist of summaries, opinions, quotes or some mixture of these. Computationally modelling these reviews allows one to discover the non-professional discussion space about a work, including an aggregated summary of the work’s plot, an implicit sequencing of various subplots and readers’ impressions of main characters. We develop a pipeline of interlocking computational tools to extract a representation of this reader-generated shared narrative model. Using a corpus of reviews of five popular novels, we discover readers’ distillation of the novels’ main storylines and their sequencing, as well as the readers’ varying impressions of characters in the novel. In so doing, we make three important contributions to the study of infinite-vocabulary networks: (i) an automatically derived narrative network that includes meta-actants; (ii) a sequencing algorithm, REV2SEQ, that generates a consensus sequence of events based on partial trajectories aggregated from reviews, and (iii) an ‘impressions’ algorithm, SENT2IMP, that provides multi-modal insight into readers’ opinions of characters.

Research on the Influence of Perceived Value of Social Reading on Teenagers’ Reading Ability

Adolescence is the golden stage for developing reading ability. Reading ability is an important factor in promoting teenagers’ know-how and cognitive structure. For teenagers who are at the stage of forming views on the world, life, and values, reading is a key part of understanding the external world. This study is an empirical analysis conducted on 210 teenagers through questionnaires to explore the influence of perceived value of social reading on teenagers’ reading ability by using the structural equation model. The results show that first, the perceived value of social reading affects teenagers’ reading ability; second, social reading motivation is the mediator of the above relationship; third, the perceived value of social reading affects teenagers’ reading ability through reading motivation. In regard to that, it is proposed that the characteristics of perceived value should be made use to stimulate students’ learning motivation and improve teenagers’ reading ability in the process of policy formulation of governmental departments and the teaching in schools.

Platformized book prosumption on Wattpad: Reading and writing in the case of a pandemic diary

This article investigates how readers and writers engage on the Wattpad platform. As examples of the digitalization of book culture, platforms such as Wattpad allow converging practices of reading and writing by means of collaborative community actions of prosumption in a data-driven environment of communication and cultural exchange. Following the concepts of prosumption, communities of practice and the platformization of media cultural production, I refer to Wattpad’s converging practices of reading and writing as ‘platformized book prosumption’. To understand how platformized book prosumption works on the Wattpad platform, I will analyse the reading and writing of the most frequently read COVID-19 online diary as a case study. In doing so, I will discuss the mutual relationship between author reflection and community engagement in social reading and writing on the Wattpad platform.

Development and Explanation of a Framework for Social Reading: Social Reading Based on Shared Regulation (SRBSR)

With the development of technologies for reading and the rise of social reading which considers readers the core in learning and emphasizes sharing and interaction, traditional theoretical reading models are facing challenges. Social reading is a type of interactive reading activity that can activate readers’ reading and discussions, promote expressions of multiple ideas, and facilitate collaborative inquiry and knowledge building. While previous researchers proposed theories or frameworks in reading or literacy research, no specific model has been developed especially for social reading and socially shared regulation. Integrating the socially shared regulation theory into social reading and expanding the theoretical perspective of problem-solving on reading can be beneficial for constructing a new social reading model. In this study, we propose a theoretical framework, Social Reading Based on Shared Regulation (SRBSR), which can account for the details and procedures of readers’ collaborative learning and shared regulatory behaviors during social reading activities. This framework can help improve the theory of purposeful reading in the new media environment and provide future instructors and researchers an operable model for designing and developing social reading courses.

Literally: social reading and meaning-making

People read less for personal fulfillment than in the past. In fact, reading for pleasure is at a 30 year low (McWilliams, 2018. People wish they read more but are deterred by several different psychological blocks, including lack of time, motivation, and access, as well as digital distraction. The dominant, modern narrative around reading is one of a sterile knowledge transmission from book to individual. I argue that this understanding of reading as a solitary act is lacking in several ways. My research focuses on meaning-making in book clubs and the advantages afforded by social reading, as an alternative. I want to situate the book club tradition within a digital landscape and showing how virtual clubs and in-person discussion are not mutually exclusive. To fill gaps in the conversation about social reading, modern book clubs, personal interaction, and meaning-making, I am looking at possible digital spaces for reading and thus identity formation.

Literally: social reading and meaning-making

People read less for personal fulfillment than in the past. In fact, reading for pleasure is at a 30 year low (McWilliams, 2018. People wish they read more but are deterred by several different psychological blocks, including lack of time, motivation, and access, as well as digital distraction. The dominant, modern narrative around reading is one of a sterile knowledge transmission from book to individual. I argue that this understanding of reading as a solitary act is lacking in several ways. My research focuses on meaning-making in book clubs and the advantages afforded by social reading, as an alternative. I want to situate the book club tradition within a digital landscape and showing how virtual clubs and in-person discussion are not mutually exclusive. To fill gaps in the conversation about social reading, modern book clubs, personal interaction, and meaning-making, I am looking at possible digital spaces for reading and thus identity formation.