Social Reading
Topic 3: Social reading
For years reading was a solitary activity, however it can be argued that reading and writing has always been a social activity (Stein, 2008). But now, the rise of digital social reading practices has changed that completely. Social reading is about relationships, for example, between readers and writers but also readers with readers etc. Additionally, pure one-way reviews are unpopular and one of the reasons that traditional book reviews are giving way to bloggers, Goodreads and other mechanisms which provide a format for interaction. Throughout the years there has been a rise of digital book clubs like ‘Reese’s book club’ on Instagram and Oprah Winfrey’s book club but also websites like Goodreads where people can review and discuss the books. On these platforms people can also express their stance on what is being discussed. Spaces on new digital media offer opportunities for multilingual/multimodal texts and self-representation but they also serve as new domains for people to express their opinions and attitudes on many topics. People mark their stance in many ways and some methods of this are liking and commenting as well as annotations and reviews. Digital social reading practices have revolutionized the way in which people interact with books and each other.
One of the ways that people can discuss and dissect books with digital social reading practices is by taking stance and people do this in different ways. For example, on Goodreads people can do this by rating their views with stars, as seen below.
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LIKES &
RATING BOOKS
Likes and rating books this way with stars is a great way for readers to express their stance on the matter as it allows users to show their appreciation or dissatisfaction for a particular piece of literature. Furthermore, users who can interact with posts particularly on social media book clubs like Reese’s book club and Oprah Winfrey’s book club, use likes in a way to show that they found the post interesting or useful however it could also be used to signal agreement or support for a particular post.
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COMMENTING
Commenting is a great way that readers can show their stance on a book. This allows users to respond to a particular post or comment with their own thoughts whether they align or misalign with the user they are responding to. Comments are a great way to show a person’s thoughts or opinions, but this is also a great way to start up a discussion and build relationships with others. Users can use comments to add extra information to a discussion that might be unknown by the other people in the conversation. As seen below the person commenting on Reese Witherspoon's book club says 'such a good read'. This user is commenting a positive stance on the topic of discussion which allows others to respond with their own thoughts and opinions. It is argued that when books are discussed collectively readers have the potential to transform. (Long 1992, pp 199). This shows the way that taking stance can help individuals change and build relationships.
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ANNOTATIONS
Annotating
a piece of text that is being discussed on a digital book club is another way
users can express their stance. This allows users to highlight key points, make
additional arguments and add their own comments, questions or insights directly
to the text itself without having to refer back to what is being said. This can
also be used to engage in a collaborative reading experience with other users, which
aids the formation of relationships.
REVIEWS
The final method that will be discussed
as a way for users to express their stance is with reviews. They allow users for
a more comprehensive way of evaluating a book. Reviews are great as they can be
used to showcase an individual’s complete satisfaction or dissatisfaction of a
book as well as applying whether they would recommend the book. Reviews can be
done in many ways from Goodreads, but many enjoy YouTube reviews as seen by the
blogger Haley Pham who makes occasional videos on the books she has read and whether
she would recommend and her personal opinions on the book.
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Overall, these stance taking
methods all hold different ways that users can express their stance, whether
that is verbally or just liking a post or rating a book with stars. However,
what can be taken from this is that digital social reading practices have
changed the way that people interact with books and each other. People are probably
less afraid to disagree with someone as they can hide behind a screen. Moreover,
they have enabled people to engage with others from different walks of life and
engage in discussions and dissect books in a way that was once impossible. (Myers, G). These
practices have transformed the reading community as its an opportunity to find
books you will love while also making reading more accessible and interactive.
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