Children and adolescents as cyber-readers: identity and digital literature

Abstract

This article aims to reason about the issue of children's and adolescent’s identity as literature readers. The main point of discussion concerns possible transformations of the reader’s identity deriving from transformations affecting the textual medium. Initially, we discuss the concept of reader's identity from the point of view of Cultural Studies. The main argument is that the reader is a category in permanent historical construction and transformation. In the sequence, we present an overview about the possible relations between literature in paper and literature in digital media, with an emphasis on specific characteristics of reading in digital environmentn. We finish the article with an analysis of some processes involved in the reading of digital poems produced by Sergio Caparelli and Ana Claudia Gruszynski, adapted from Capparelli’s work Visual Poetry, that was published originally in hard copy in 2000 by the Global Publishing House.