The Variety of User Experiences: Literacy Roles and Stances on Story‐Sharing Platforms

Abstract

The authors explored adolescents’ literacy practices and identities on newly popular story‐sharing platforms. For budding readers, writers, and designers, these sites represent new media ecologies. With a mixed‐method case study of 40 globally dispersed adolescents, the authors chronicled literacy roles, identity stances, and practices on the story‐sharing apps Wattpad and Figment. These media‐ted practices proved consequential for the participants’ sense of investment in what they did. Findings show that adolescents divergently invested in a social orientation toward writing and an orientation focused on textual output. Different genres of practice came to the forefront, depending on users’ identity stances. Participants in these platforms took on various stances, ranging from friend to fan to reader to novice and expert writer, which cohered with attendant activities. The authors conclude with implications for research, design, and coordination of learning environments for adolescents, given the observed heterogeneity in stances, roles, practices, and experiences.

Reading During Adolescence: Why Adolescents Choose (or Do Not Choose) Books

“…To promote book reading among adolescents, it is essential that teachers understand what motivates them to read books, as well as understand the challenges associated with encouraging book reading. Adolescents are engaging in diverse literacy activities (e.g., Clark, 2019; Korobkova & Collins, 2019), yet book reading has been consistently associated with a wide range of positive cognitive and academic outcomes. For example, students who read more books have better general knowledge, verbal abilities, reading comprehension/speed/accuracy, spelling skill, and school achievement (Duncan, McGeown, Griffiths, Stothard, & Dobai, 2016; Mol & Bus, 2011; Mol & Jolles, 2014; Torppa et al, 2019).…”

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

“…Wattpad is an example of how the circulation of literature has changed due to digital technology, leading to a literary landscape in which the transmission of stories happens through complex sociotechnical digital networks [21][22][23][24]. Although it has been operating since more than a decade, so far there are only a few studies exploring the social dynamics of authors and readers on Wattpad [25][26][27][28][29][30][31], and even fewer are focusing on the texts and comments [32][33][34]. A similar phenomenon-in terms of popularity among readers and autonomy from the publishing industry-is that of fanfiction.…”