Teenagers and young people talk about reading on the net

Abstract

This paper documents the virtual spaces where hundreds of young people (aged 13 to 29 years old) talk daily about books, reading and authors. In these virtual spaces they exchange points of view published in their blogs, readings titles, and they even debate whether if the narrator is appropriate for the given narration or they even complain about how reading is regarded at school. The research is based on the study of two cases: Laura Gallego’s forums and a marketing campaign to promote the selling of the book Delirium via virtual platforms like forums, Twitter, Facebook and blogs. 1.466 documents have been analyzed by 452 subjects in order to identify the main features of these spaces and how do they work: what do they offer to young people in order to attract them to a common interest: reading. Different levels of analysis and data types have been combined: from inspection to thick description and textual analysis, and spaces and discourses (posts, comments, Tweets and comments on forums) have been analyzed as well. Blogs and the communications networks have been conceived as a phenomenon of social communication and also, as a tool for reading promotion. Within this investigation, communication networks such as Twitter and blogs are considered as a social communicative phenomenon but, specially, as a tool to promote reading among youngsters.