December 2021
Society now consumes much of its literature on the internet. Whether through online newspapers, microblogs, social media, e-books, fanfictions, or advertisements “Westerns who are active on the Internet arguably read more in their daily lives than they ever have before”[1]. This prospect is frightening to many who fear that reading online is a threat to paperback book culture and printed resources. But this is not entirely founded: out of the adult population who read resources online, 77 percent of them also read printed books[2]. Thus, there is a notable population of people who have consumed traditional literature and are now transferring their reading-comprehension skills into the online world. In Wendy Sutherland-Smith's article “Weaving the Literacy Web: Changes in Reading from Page to Screen”, she argues that “Web-based text permits nonlinear strategies of thinking […] is interactive, with the reader able to add, change, or move text; and enables a blurring of the relationship between reader and writer”[3]. What is nonlinear in the Internet realm, then? Nonlinear encompasses authorship, graphics, hyperlinks, interactivity, commentary, community, and every other way that technology interferes with our traditional, straightforward approach to reading.
In this paper I will examine two sides of nonlinearity: authorship and content. Authorship is no longer linear; the communal aspect of commenting and interactive engagement with resources has shifted who the author is and how an individual becomes one. Similarly, content has undergone a shift; one that relies on hyperlinks. I will explore how hyperlinks also manipulate authorship and enable the reader to distort linearity and “play with” the narrative.
Authorship is changing, it is becoming a communal process. In Julie Coiro’s article “Exploring Literacy on the Internet: Reading Comprehension on the Internet: Expanding Our Understanding of Reading Comprehension to Encompass New Literacies”, Coiro argues that “web-based text environments are, by their very nature, interactive. Readers are invited to coauthor online texts”[4]. A prime example of a digital platform that cultivates communal writing and reading are media outlets and their comment sections. These comment sections are a new approach to participating in literary culture, compounding the knowledge available on these sites. They open the floor to dialogue, reflection, and debate. “Readers [now] expect to be able to comment on what they read”, reflecting on our newfound entitlement to authorship[5]. The New York Times is a media outlet that offers a comment section, and within the comment section, a “Reader’s Picks” and “Editor’s Picks”, highlighting noteworthy feedback and commentary. In Sherry Turkle’s Opinion Piece “The Flight from Conversation”, Turkle discusses society’s online presence and public authorship, claiming our new motto is “I share, therefore I am”[6]. Her piece ignited 307 comments, one of which (named Nothin2hide) argues: “Those brief virtual connections are true conversation, even if abbreviated and incomplete”[7]. Nothin2hide is just as much an author here as Sherry Turkle; yes, Turkle is the credited and cited author, yet a reader absorbs content from both contributors. Nothin2hide’s comment, which was highlighted in the Reader’s Picks section, was recommended nine times. These nine people (though small) represent a group of people who exited the page having considered both Turkle and Nothin2hide’s point of view. Thus, authorship is nontraditional in our online world. Commentors, observers, and reflectors carry similar power to that of professional authors. As a result, a reader can flip back and forth between the article and the comment section to further understand the piece. A reader can leave their own feedback and engage with writing. The lack of direction and narrative in authorship and readability is what makes this online source nonlinear.
Engagement with authors can contribute to and manipulate the original narrative. Rather than a media source which is compounded by feedback (leaving it up to the reader to combine text and comment), there are also live narratives which adapt to the likes and dislikes of the audience participating. Social media is an example of this conversation between audience and author; Twitter, a platform for writing “a maximum of 140 characters”, “was employed to improve writing, to develop reflection, and to [expand] the class community"[8]. The 2021, A24 movie “Zola” is based on a 148-tweet twitter thread by Detroit-based stripper, Zola. On October 27, 2015, Zola tweeted: “Y’all wanna hear a story about why me & this bitch here fell out? It’s kind of long but full of suspense” (A24 Films)[9]. In the subsequent 147 tweets, Zola tells the story of a road trip to Florida with Jessica, “Jessica’s maudlin boyfriend, Jarrett; and Jessica’s violent Nigerian pimp, ‘Z’. Tricks get turned, a hustler gets murdered, Jarrett leaps from a four-story window”[10]. This live narrative received a remarkable amount of online attention, with tweets showing 700 or more shares on average. As a result of these live reactions “Zola [admitted] to embellishing some of the more sensational details – Jarrett's suicide attempt, Z shooting the pimp – for entertainment value […] When she posted on Twitter, she was caught up in the moment, she explains, riffling on the reactions of her followers who were responding in real time”[11]. Who is the author in this case? Is it the person who typed the tweets, Zola, or is it the fans who influenced Zola’s story? Authorship is not straightforward in this case study, and neither is readership. Zola’s story is not only an accumulation of her influenced tweets, but a combination of the comments and live reactions she received online. Thus, the story is both a narrative and a reaction. Readership is nonlinear too; to scroll through Zola’s story means combining the bits and pieces in the 148 tweets. It also means reading the comments, thriving off of the engagement and perhaps adding your own thoughts.
Authorship in the digital world is a collaborative process. Whether through a comment section that extends the information on the page or through a live process that shapes the way an author speaks, authorship is more complicated now. While this shapes content, content is changing structurally as well. We are now interacting with hyperlinks, “a form of electronic text in which documents are linked together using an associative system”[12]. Hyperlinks, used in both fiction and non-fiction, have changed the structure and approach to how we read.
Hyperlinks have adjusted the structure of our reading, forcing a nonlinear consumption of knowledge. In the context of hyperlinks, nonlinear refers to the clicking, interacting, and reading of every “hyperlinked” tab. Our reading is never quite finished when utilizing articles with hyperlinks, we can keep consuming and consuming, clicking and clicking, moving from one topic to the next. It is an infinite process. In Alice Bell’s “Schema Theory, Hypertext Fiction and Links”, she explains that “hypertext can be traced to Vannevar Bush’s article ‘As We May Think’ in which he outlined a plan for the ‘memex’ machine, an information storage system […] the user of the memex would instruct the machine to create links between documents so as to ‘build a trail’”[13]. This “trail” is what Vannevar Bush believed to represent the way the human mind works, “[operating] by association”[14]. The famous online encyclopedia, Wikipedia (which is co-authored by volunteers), even has a non-fiction-based game dedicated towards its hyperlinked content. The game, called “Wiki-Link Game” is described as an activity “designed to waste time and life – to fill those idle moments when you can’t think of another article that needs writing”[15]. You play by arriving at the “random link page” and choosing a number between one and ten. This Nth number is the Nth hyperlink one chooses in each hyperlinked article. I played in my own experiment; the random link page brought me to a Wikipedia article about Francisco Moreira[16]. I decided that four would be my Nth number and read until I arrived at the fourth hyperlink in the article. That hyperlink directed me to a page about A Coruña[17]. I then read about A Coruña, a municipality of Galicia, until I arrived at the fourth hyperlink: seventeenth, which directed me to a page about all the municipalities in Spain[18]. I did not finish one of these articles, each interrupted by my interest in the fourth hyperlink. Thus, my reading was disrupted, nonlinear in nature. My accumulation of knowledge was also nonlinear. It was directed by an association rather than a single, straightforward narrative.
Yet, hyperlinking is not just about association, it can be about decision and narrative making on behalf of the reader. Hyperlinking, as a concept, is not a newfound phenomenon. It has existed in printed fiction for a long time, under the guise of a “create your own path” narrative. Science fiction novels, children's books, and more, offer the reader the opportunity to make a decision, and then directs them to a section of the novel that carries on with the storyline impacted by said decision. Now, these novels can also be found online, with a simple click on a hyperlinked text bringing the reader to different paths. Lance Olsen and Tim Guthrie are two authors who experimented with having a novel printed and hypertext-digitalized: “Published in the Iowa Review Web in 2005 […] [the] web-based hypertext fiction 10:01 remediates Lance Olsen’s print novel, 10:01 which was published in the same year”[19]. Thus, in 10:01’s printed version, it is “structured linearly with chapters progressing chronologically”, while in its digitized version, “the internal links […] allow readers to navigate the text in three ways”[20]. To read 10:01 online, then, is nonlinear. It requires the author to be a participant and engage with the decision making within the plot. The voice of the reader is just as important (playing pretend author), as the reader is allowed to disrupt the narrative path and navigate back and forth in the text, present and future. One character in 10:01, Trudi, remarks at 00:02:58:27: “The more you look, the more you see. The more you see, the more you want. The more you want, the more you look”[21]. This is exactly how hyperlinked content works. And notably, while hyperlinked content inherently disrupts the structure of a narrative -- whether non-fiction or fiction – it also brings authorship into question, as the traditional scholar who once held the spotlight now shares that platform with readers who choose when and where to look.
The consumption of information and literature online is nonlinear in nature. Authorship is made more complicated by readership’s newfound participation in it. Content is manipulated as a result. Additionally, content is now hyper dependent on hypertext, reshaping how we digest information and in what direction it leads us. The common thread: readers are engaging in literature in a way they never have before. They can influence authors, create commentaries, and shape the path they want to read. Perhaps the subsequent question is whether it is a positive change? That is, to have everyone given the platform of a scholar. My reader identity would argue yes: everyone in society should be given the opportunity to share their thoughts and influence others. My academic and politically conscious self would hesitate: what happens when everybody is an author? And, what happens, when we do not all have the background to become one?
Bibliography
Bell, Alice. "Schema Theory, Hypertext Fiction and Links." Style 48, no. 2 (2014): 140-61. http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5325/style.48.2.140.
Chute, Hillary. "Comics as Literature? Reading Graphic Narrative." PMLA 123, no. 2 (2008): 452-65. http://www.jstor.org/stable/25501865.
Coiro, Julie. "Exploring Literacy on the Internet: Reading Comprehension on the Internet: Expanding Our Understanding of Reading Comprehension to Encompass New Literacies." The Reading Teacher 56, no. 5 (2003): 458-64. http://www.jstor.org/stable/20205224.
"A Coruña." Wikipedia. Accessed October 18, 2021. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Coru%C3%B1a.
Fitzpatrick, Kathleen. "Reading (and Writing) Online, Rather than on the Decline." Profession, 2012, 41-52. http://www.jstor.org/stable/41714136.
"Francisco Moreira." Wikipedia. Accessed October 18, 2021. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francisco_Moreira.
Griswold, Wendy, Terry Mcdonnell, and Nathan Wright. "Reading and the Reading Class in the Twenty-First Century." Annual Review of Sociology 31 (2005): 127-41. http://www.jstor.org/stable/29737714.
Henry, Laurie A. "Searching for an Answer: The Critical Role of New Literacies While Reading on the Internet." The Reading Teacher 59, no. 7 (2006): 614-27. http://www.jstor.org/stable/20204398.
Kushner, David. "Zola Tells All: The Real Story Behind the Greatest Stripper Saga Ever Tweeted." Rolling Stone. Last modified November 17, 2015. Accessed October 18, 2021. https://www.rollingstone.com/feature/zola-tells-all-the-real-story-behind-the-greatest-stripper-saga-ever-tweeted-73048/.
"List of Municipalities of Spain." Wikipedia. Accessed October 18, 2021. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_municipalities_of_Spain.
María-Carmen Ricoy, and Tiberio Feliz. "Twitter as a Learning Community in Higher Education." Journal of Educational Technology and Society 19, no. 1 (2016): 237-48. http://www.jstor.org/stable/jeductechsoci.19.1.237.
Olsen, Lance, and Tim Guthrie. "10:01." Collection eLiterature. Accessed October 18, 2021. https://collection.eliterature.org/1/works/olsen_guthrie__10_01.html.
Reyman, Jessica. "User Data on the Social Web: Authorship, Agency, and Appropriation." College English 75, no. 5 (2013): 513-33. http://www.jstor.org/stable/24238250.
Sutherland-smith, Wendy. "Weaving the Literacy Web: Changes in Reading from Page to Screen." The Reading Teacher 55, no. 7 (2002): 662-69. http://www.jstor.org/stable/20205116.
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[1] Kathleen Fitzpatrick, "Reading (and Writing) Online, Rather than on the Decline," Profession, 2012, 42, http://www.jstor.org/stable/41714136.
[2] Fitzpatrick, "Reading (and," 44.
[3] Wendy Sutherland-smith, "Weaving the Literacy Web: Changes in Reading from Page to Screen," The Reading Teacher 55, no. 7 (2002): 665, http://www.jstor.org/stable/20205116.
[4] Julie Coiro, "Exploring Literacy on the Internet: Reading Comprehension on the Internet: Expanding Our Understanding of Reading Comprehension to Encompass New Literacies," The Reading Teacher 56, no. 5 (2003): 460, http://www.jstor.org/stable/20205224.
[5] Fitzpatrick, "Reading (and," 45.
[6] Sherry Turkle, "The Flight from Conversation," The New York Times, last modified April 21, 2021, accessed October 18, 2021, https://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/22/opinion/sunday/the-flight-from-conversation.html.
[7] Turkle, "The Flight," The New York Times.
[8] María-Carmen Ricoy and Tiberio Feliz, "Twitter as a Learning Community in Higher Education," Journal of Educational Technology and Society 19, no. 1 (2016): 238, http://www.jstor.org/stable/jeductechsoci.19.1.237.
[9] "Zola," A24 Films, accessed October 18, 2021, https://a24films.com/films/zola.
[10] David Kushner, "Zola Tells All: The Real Story Behind the Greatest Stripper Saga Ever Tweeted," Rolling Stone, last modified November 17, 2015, accessed October 18, 2021, https://www.rollingstone.com/feature/zola-tells-all-the-real-story-behind-the-greatest-stripper-saga-ever-tweeted-73048/.
[11] Kushner, "Zola Tells," Rolling Stone.
[12] Alice Bell, "Schema Theory, Hypertext Fiction and Links," Style 48, no. 2 (2014): 140, http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5325/style.48.2.140.
[13] Bell, "Schema Theory," 141.
[14] Bell, "Schema Theory," 141.
[15] "Wikipedia: Wiki-Link Game," Wikipedia, accessed October 18, 2021, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wiki-Link_Game.
[16] "Francisco Moreira," Wikipedia, accessed October 18, 2021, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francisco_Moreira.
[17]"A Coruña," Wikipedia, accessed October 18, 2021, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Coru%C3%B1a.
[18] "List of Municipalities of Spain," Wikipedia, accessed October 18, 2021, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_municipalities_of_Spain
[19] Bell, "Schema Theory," 148.
[20] Bell, "Schema Theory," 149.
[21] Bell, "Schema Theory," 153.