Reader Response

Something that was brought up in our reading of the Update Culture textbook that I really liked was the quote “print writers deal with editors, and newspapers print letters to the editor. However, social media is different from this response due to the scale of response and real-time responsivity” (Gallagher 4). Our reading for the week and our in-class discussion went over this idea a little bit more in-depth when we talked about how creators and users really can interact and have an influence over the kind of content that is created and the changes that it may undergo.

I’ve seen this personally take place within writing forums, like the writing site Wattpad. On this popular site, creators and authors will write up their stories and post them a chapter at a time, or how often they wish to update their stories. Within each sentence or grouping of text, readers of the stories have the opportunity to comment and interact with the writing. Some will leave links to gifs, emojis, tag the author or other readers who need to see the part, and just generally comment. Other readers or the author themselves can reply to the comments left on their writing to answer questions, clarify what they meant in their writing, or just join in on the excitement over something that was presented in the chapter. It also is pretty common to see authors post on their walls an announcement that they are about to publish a new chapter so that readers can flock to the newest update and comment in real-time about their reactions. I’ll be interested to see if this constant interaction will continue to be a staple of the many social media platforms, or if changes to certain companies will take that away.