(Con)text comprehension in digital social media

Abstract

In this article, we address the reading issue from the point of view of complexity. Understanding, according to Beaugrande (1997), that the text is a communicative event whose configuration involves elements of different nature, including the participants of interaction, we think that traditional approaches to reading, even those which are focused on interaction, do not satisfactorily bolster comprehension of this phenomenon. In order to analyze how aspects that characterize reading as a complex activity show at (con)text comprehension in digital social media, we leaned on the articles by Pellanda (2005) and by Franco (2011) and we were supported by the autopoietic theory by Maturana and Varela (1995), as well as by the concepts of emergency and incorporation by Hanks (2008). Through the analysis of two examples of interaction conveyed in virtual environment, we observed that reading triggers readers’ autopoiesis as living systems.