Analysis of a massive body of Wattpad annotations
Reading has increasingly shifted from print to digital, and the shift has furnished new research opportunities. A massive amount of marginal annotation occurs in the Fanfiction world. This PLOS ONE article by Pianzola, Rebora, and Lauer uses Wattpad as a resource for literary studies, bringing both quantitative and qualitative insights from over 31,000,000 titles.
This is truly a tour-de-force study, in that it:
- analyzed annotation output in 13 different languages
- contrasted reading engagement and annotation behaviour between classics and teen fiction genres
- had network analysis indicating connections among readers
- showed what textual elements elicited the most reader responses and what those responses were
- used sentiment analysis to look for relationships in sentiment between the text and the annotations. Longitudinally, they can track sentiment over time in each source, and see where they are concordant/discordant
The article is certainly worth a full read. Here are a few highlights……
Some fanfiction works have garnered more than 2 million annotations. The annotation output for classics is lower, but still provides ample fodder for further analysis.
Love is a universal theme, across work in all languages…….no surprises there……
Many readers start, few finish; the proportion of reads to the finish was better with fan fiction versus the classics. This is likely to the dismay of many English teachers.
Annotation platforms like Perusall can analyze whether comments are concentrated or distributed by a particular student in an assigned text.
One can use sentiment analysis to check for concordance or discordance between the text and the annotations
Another analysis of the Fanfiction communities indicates how they can function as sites of "distributed mentoring". Isn't this what we are often trying to promote in our classrooms?
If fanfiction communities can do it, why not the freshman composition class? One limitation might be wading through a bulk of "shallow positive comments" to get to the more substantial constructive criticism. The annotation platform provides the opportunity -- the users provide the value!!!!