Reader-Writer Interactivity and Its Implications on Chinese Literature Website
Presentation is included in Panel 3: Chinese Language Teaching and Online Education in Asian Studies
Abstract
This study illustrates user interactivity on Chinese literature websites based on Qidian’s case. It looks at how interactive features implemented on Qidian encourage interactions among readers and writers; how these interactive exchanges rebalance the power relations between readers and writers and further changes the processes of literary productions and consumptions. Findings from direct observations and interviews not only show the commonly hailed positive effects of interactivity such as stimulating users’ productivity and facilitating collective interpretation, but also show the understudied negative effects. These negative effects reflects on how over-empowered readers push the literary production to serve their entertaining needs, and how writers’ compromising to the readers as well as to the commercial websites owners further degrade Chinese web literature toward low standard commercial commodities.
Reader-Writer Interactivity and Its Implications on Chinese Literature Website
Hanover Duxbury Room
This study illustrates user interactivity on Chinese literature websites based on Qidian’s case. It looks at how interactive features implemented on Qidian encourage interactions among readers and writers; how these interactive exchanges rebalance the power relations between readers and writers and further changes the processes of literary productions and consumptions. Findings from direct observations and interviews not only show the commonly hailed positive effects of interactivity such as stimulating users’ productivity and facilitating collective interpretation, but also show the understudied negative effects. These negative effects reflects on how over-empowered readers push the literary production to serve their entertaining needs, and how writers’ compromising to the readers as well as to the commercial websites owners further degrade Chinese web literature toward low standard commercial commodities.