Moderating Readers and Reading Online

Abstract

Despite the proliferation of online book clubs and reading groups, very little has been written to date on the management of these spaces and how this helps frame the kinds of discussion and interpretative work that take place. This paper draws on interviews with moderators of online book-related sites, alongside ethnographic observation and textual analysis of online interactions to consider issues of authority, hierarchy, power and control, asking how these act to structure or facilitate acts of interpretation taking place online.