Goodreads and the Rereading Paradox: Affect, Attention, Affordances

Description

In this paper, we recontextualize the practice of re-reading within the consumer and media logics of the (post-)digital age. Although research on the reading experience in the digital age is burgeoning, the specific sub-practice of re-reading is underresearched. We fill this gap by taking the example of Goodreads. In 2017, Goodreads launched its ‘Rereading feature’ allowing users to not only keep track of how many times they have read a book but to also have each re-read counted in their Goodreads’ Reading Challenges (Goodreads, 2017). We argue that such affordances quantify the practice of re-reading that was previously theorised as an anti-establishment, anti-consumerist activity (Barthes, 1980), thereby paradoxically ascribing a changing set of meanings to re-reading.

To delve into this paradox, we take an approach based in platform hermeneutics that instrumentalises traditional hermeneutical tools for the analysis of digital platforms (Van de Ven & Chateau, 2024). We examine how Goodreads affordances quantify the contemporary re-reading experience as a result of the platform's media logics. Our analysis draws on the attention economy (Goldhaber, 1997; Baumbach, 2022) and its relation to the modulation of affect (Jenkins & Huzinec, 2021; Paasonen, 2019) to demonstrate how the twin forces of attention and affect create conditions within which the practice of re-reading gets shrouded in late consumer capitalist ideologies. Literary criticism by Roland Barthes (1980) and Matei Calinescu (1993) on the topic of re-reading serves as a useful point of departure and places this paper at the interdisciplinary junction of literary studies, bookternet research, and media studies.

Period	27 Jun 2024
Event title	Researching the Reading Experience in the Digital Age
Event type	Conference
Location	Copenhagen, DenmarkShow on map
Degree of Recognition	International