Youth's experiences with books: Orientations towards digital spaces of literary socialisation

Abstract

This article reports the findings of an interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) of ten interviews with participants aged 13 to 23 from international contexts on youths’ experiences of literary socialisation. Guided by affect theory and cultural geographies, the research examines the affective intensities arising from those experiences that render possible digital participation around books, reading and writing. Consequently, we aim to contribute to understanding youths’ literary socialisation dynamics and the role of digital media in young readers’ literacies. Through the notion of space as an interrelation of trajectories, we could analyse these participants’ experiences around spatial nodes of home, school, circle of friends and community. The findings led us to conceptualise four orientations of youth to digital literary participation: literary kinship, literary intuition, literary intimacy, and literary activism. Finally, we discuss digital algorithmic mechanisms in literary socialisation through the lens of critical literacies.