A Democracy of Children’s Literature Critics? The Opportunities and Risks of Paying Attention to Open Reviews and Mass Discussion

Drawing on the outputs of a wider democracy of online reviewers presents the academic study of children’s literature with opportunities and challenges, and can enhance critical discussion. As it is now easy to locate a large number of online reviews, it is argued that children’s literature studies needs to make room for a wider range of critical voices. This article reports on the work of two cohorts of over a thousand students. Each cohort, in consecutive years, researched online reviews as part of their studies in contemporary children’s literature on a one year part-time module at a distance learning university. Despite the perceived lack of status of non-academic, non-professional critiques, students’ and tutors’ experiences of these tasks showed the value of researching online reviews. This work also allowed for alternative forms of writing and assessment alongside more conventional academic essays, and encouraged students to develop their skills of critical digital literacy. Module leaders recommended basic initial research methods for student use, but for more extensive or larger scale research it will be important to address methodological issues and understand how online reviewer communities operate. Such changes in approaches to teaching and learning also need to take into account the issues surrounding social media usage, ownership and control

Public space and private confusions: the problems of handling email petitions

This article examines the text and circulation of a well known email petition on women in Afghanistan sent to personal inboxes, email lists and discussion threads. Drawing on collected examples and interviews it considers readers’ and writers’ responses, which were often considerably more complex than either simple deletion or simple forwarding, and reveal a range of orientations towards mass email campaigns. While some referred rhetorically to this form of Internet communication as potentially empowering and a way of changing the world, others referred to formal or informal regulations in order to influence others to stop circulating the petition. A third group were unable to opt confidently for either of these positions. These varied responses are related, firstly, to the features of the petition which derive from the specific affordances of email, and secondly to readers’ experiences and circumstances, both online and offline. It is notable that the majority of the readers and writers in this study were women, and the petition itself focuses on women’s rights. Responses to the petition, which is itself a text about women and public space, show that the activities of sending and receiving emails are perceived as crossing boundaries between private and public space, raising issues of exposure and vulnerability, as well as uncertainty about the “right” way to handle this new type of mail

Dismay and disappointment: perspectives of inexperienced adult learners on becoming webpage readers

Practitioners teaching new Internet users often report that adult learners are disappointed by their first experiences of the World Wide Web. This article focuses on problematic experiences of developing new web-based literacy practices, particularly for adult learners, and how they can be addressed without attributing difficulties to learners’ own deficiencies or attitudes. The perspectives of inexperienced learners in a variety of settings are discussed in relation to the constructs of usability and affordance. Concepts of multimodal affordances and hypermodality, developed within textual studies, foreground potential readings while usability studies foreground technological design. Within literacy studies meanwhile there has been a strong turn towards social context. This paper aims to connect these models of reading, rooted variously in studies of human–computer interaction, theoretical approaches to multimodal texts, and socially situated literacy practices. It concludes that for practitioners, an interdisciplinary approach can be most effective

The contribution of children's literature studies

This chapter discusses the emergence of Children's Literature as a distinct field within English and re-evaluates what was traditionally seen as a marginal area of literary studies. It draws attention to the field's strong themes of multimodality and considers moves towards new, interactive story-making practices which are transforming traditional linear experiences

Women reading online : the gendered process of developing new literacy practices

EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo