This paper is based on a research designed to investigate current reading and writing practices in the digital age among young people from diverse backgrounds attending secondary education in Portugal. Using a mixed methodology, the research will address three specific dimensions: exploring social media culture and its role in promoting literature among young people, through social network analysis; understanding reading and writing practices and their place in young people’s education and cultures, through questionnaires and focus groups; developing creative writing communities to co-investigate with young people the future of reading and writing, through participatory methods.

In this presentation, we focus on the first dimension, as the question of reading practices in the digital age requires urgent attention. We understand youth cultures as plural, marked by social and ethnic diversity, rural and urban areas, sexual diversity, and economic disparity. These intersected positionalities (Crenshaw, 1991) reinforce inequalities in opportunities and access to education, influencing rights and generating structural inequalities (Ferreira & Almeida, 2023) that impact on learning and literacy. With the world on a smartphone, providing digital literacy that enables survival – and success – in the digital era (Silva, 2023) is key to creating a socially just, politically aware, and community-involved youth.

Despite the turn to digital, young people’s purchase of print books increased by 44% in the last year (Cunha, 2023). Networks like Instagram and TikTok are considered responsible for an influx of readers (Neves et al., 2023b), catapulting books into a status of cultural trend. Since the emergence of social networks many theoretical approaches have attempted to understand the usage of these social spaces for engagement, entertainment, and information, ranging from medical fields to media studies. In education, however, studies on this particular aspect of bookfluencers’ impact on the reading cultures of youths are scarce (Guiñez-Cabrera & Mansilla-Obando, 2022).

Emerging from some studies on influencers is the concept of 'influencer pedagogy' (Hendry, Hartung, & Welch, 2022),  which illustrates the notion that social media enables peer-influenced learning (Greenhow & Lewin, 2016 p. 7) and creates potential for educational work via social media, through interaction with followers, as not only formal and informal learning contexts become blurred, but it is also less clear who/what an ‘educator’ might be. Taking the impact of social media influencers seriously poses the question of a major transformation that is radically reshaping social life.

It also poses challenges in an educational perspective. These actors are social forces, remodelling and systemically changing political and cultural spheres, inviting a revision of societal designs and moral codes (Beck, 2016a). The “centrality of choice in the self-constitution of postmodern agents” (Bauman, 1992 p. 201) constitutes the modern, digital agents, problematising their morality, social responsibility and connection. ‘Influencers’ do not only self-construct but also, as their denomination makes clear, influence the construction of the other (Bauman, 1993).

This paper focuses on the actors and their interactions that push books into the social and cultural digital spheres; their perception of their role, and how they influence and construct the perspectives and choices of others. In addition, we will discuss what they see as their own moral, educational, and social responsibility, and what this means for the potential of the digital to not only generate literary engagement, but also educational, social, cultural, and moral impulses that have the potential to redesign modern youth cultures through their reading practices.

This research uses a mixed methods sequential approach (Cresswell, 2014), using social network analysis, questionnaires and focus groups, and participatory methodologies. This paper is based on the first stage of research, which in turn is underpinned by Social Network Analysis (SNA), the investigation method concerned with connections between people and groups within social networks (Gupta et al., 2024). Deep diving into the most popular social media networks for young adults, we have located the significant Portuguese book-influencers, uncovering who they are, what they promote, and how they connect to their audiences. In analysing agents within the same networks, we avoid the comparison of networks of disparate sizes due to the dangers of an unreliable comparison between connections of different densities (Law & Lassard, 1999). In this research, SNA is considered a field of study, more than just a qualitative or quantitative method. It embraces a mixed and exploratory approach, as a metrics-based approach is not enough to properly evaluate these connections. In this process, the quantitative approach focuses on the centrality of a point (the social media bookfluencer), as an influential vehicle in the process of diffusion of information within a star-shaped structure (Scott, 2012). This egocentric measure focuses on degree, indegree, and outdegree, as well as on the value of the lines regarding the intensity of the relationships. The collected data built up a database of over 500 bookstagram and booktok accounts. To find the bookfluencers, the criteria for exclusion focused on number of followers, eliminating any with fewer than 600 followers. This is not to say these accounts do not influence their connections, but they do not reach far enough to attain the younger demographic we seek to access. We proceeded to cross-reference accounts from both platforms. Four bookfluencers emerged as being the most influential on Instagram and TikTok alike, each one with over 10k followers on either platform. As it is considered that quantitative approaches are not sufficient to gauge the nature and complexity of these dynamic systems, we introduce data collection that goes beyond mapping the points and lines, seeking to access the interpretations that agents imprint on these connections and their influence in the behaviour and characteristics of the networks. Therefore, data was collected pertaining to the type of content, suggested books, and interactions with the audience. This then translates into content analysis, allowing for the emergence of specific themes within what is promoted.

Accounts promoting books are an active trend in the Portuguese social media landscape. We decided to select only accounts with 600+ followers, but the overall number of accounts focused on the promotion of reading is much larger. First analysis indicates that these accounts are overwhelmingly led by female users, with an average age of 26,2 (Instagram) and 22,5 (TikTok). The revenue potential for book-selling platforms is high, and most users share affiliation links in their bios, with links to reading apps common, too. While the accounts analysed focus on several genres, some authors and genres are cross-cuttingly popular: thrillers, heteronormative romances, fantasy, intersections between these genres, books that inspired television shows, and, albeit less common, queer romances. Here we can see the emergence of themes such as gender roles, freedom of speech, agency, and neurodivergence. Preliminary analysis suggests a restoration of conservative values, arguably in tune with trends such as ‘soft girl’ or ‘trad wife’ (the return of the traditional ‘housewife’). The overwhelming majority of what is promoted aligns with traditional expectations of gender roles: female protagonists seeking heteronormative relationships that fuel their romantic fantasies. Bookfluencers promote these books and generate content aimed at pleasing their “literary boyfriends”, or gauging who they would be in those universes. We expect to discuss further concepts of youth and education emerging from bookfluencers. While romances with traditional gender roles prosper, fuelled by influencers’ content, LGBTQIA+ content challenges these expectations. The promotion (through book recommendations) of brands known to be environmentally harmful, or that breach responsibilities of social justice and human rights proliferates, whereas content addressing freedom, human rights, social justice or equality is less frequent. We aim to continue this line of research into bookfluencers, interviewing them to further understand their sense of social responsibility and awareness of their impact on their followers.

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