25 What Is BookTok, and How Is It Influencing What Australian Teenagers Read?
Learning Outcomes
- Apply the reading process to “What Is BookTok, and How Is It Influencing What Australian Teenagers Read?”
- Summarize the article.
- Respond to the article.
- Connect with other readers on #BookTok.
Preview the Article
Follow the steps below to preview the article “What Is BookTok, and How Is It Influencing What Australian Teenagers Read?” Ideally, you should print the article and write your responses in the margins of the printed copy. To read more about previewing, visit the chapter on previewing a reading.
- Read the title. What does it make you think about? What do you think the article is about? What questions do you have? Record your predictions and questions on the printed copy of the article next to the title.
- Do you have any experience with BookTok? If not, search for #BookTok on TikTok.
- Read the opening three paragraphs. What additional predictions do you now have about the article? What additional questions do you have? Record them on the printed copy of the article.
- Scan the article and notice the headings (e.g. What are TikTok and BookTok?) and subheadings (e.g. 1. Playful and creative) within the article. What additional thoughts or questions do these raise? Record them on the printed copy of the article.
- Scan the bolded and underlined vocabulary in the article. If there are any words that you do not know well, look them up in a print or online dictionary and write some notes about their meanings on the printed copy of the article. Keep in mind that some words have multiple meanings. For example, the word medium is used in paragraph 15 and again later in the article; however, it does not refer to a size (e.g. small, medium, large). You may need to read the sentence containing the word to understand the word’s usage.
- Based on your preview of the article, what do you think is the central point of the article? (Don’t worry if you are not sure. This is a prediction or guess – you do not have to be correct as long as you are engaging your brain.) Record your prediction on the printed copy of the article.
- Based on your preview, do you predict that the article is narrative, expository, or argumentative?
Read Interactively
Now, read the article using the guidelines from the chapter on reading interactively. As you read, follow these steps to engage with the text.
- Pause to confirm or revise your predictions and to answer the questions you posed while previewing the article. Write down those revised predictions and responses to the questions as you read. If you cannot find the answers to your questions, save them for further research and discussion.
- Pause at other points to check for understanding of what you just read. Can you explain key ideas in your own words yet? If not, reread to clarify. Ideas that come later in a text build on the previous ones. Therefore, it makes no sense to keep reading if you did not understand something or if you became distracted. Anyone can become distracted while reading, so don’t hesitate to use the strategy of rereading when necessary.
- Pay attention to any vocabulary words that are confusing. Look up the words in a dictionary if they are interfering with your understanding, or mark them to return to later.
- Record any opinions or reactions you have to the reading in the margins of the article.
- Write down any further questions that develop as you read.
What is BookTok, and how is it influencing what Australian teenagers read?
Katya Johanson, Deakin University; Amy Schoonens, Queensland University of Technology; Bronwyn Reddan, Deakin University; Leonie Rutherford, Deakin University, and Michael Dezuanni, Queensland University of Technology
May 9, 2022
1 Video-sharing app TikTok has been credited with making reading “cool again” among teenagers, through the hashtag #BookTok.
2 Most BookTok posts are playful short videos, no longer than a minute, that match book images to popular soundtracks.
3 For example, in the ten-second video “YA whoops”, prolific Australian BookTokker @londonapples, wearing her trademark teddy-bear beanie, appears guiltily surprised when interrupted from her reading.
What are TikTok and BookTok?
4 TikTok is the fastest growing social media platform in history. It’s most popular among young people.
5 In 2020, 38% of Australian teens aged 12 to 17 reported spending time on TikTok. Last year, the hours spent by Australian users increased by 40% to 23.4 hours per month.
6 BookTok is a community of TikTok creators who post videos celebrating their love of books and reading. The hashtag #BookTok now has more than 46 billion views worldwide.
Who watches and creates BookTok videos?
7 Our Teen Reading survey investigates how Australian teenagers use book-related social media, and who they are.
8 Preliminary results reveal that while more than half of Australian teenagers use TikTok (56%), a much smaller number engage with “book talk” on social media, including BookTok (16%).
9 This supports our earlier research, which found that regular book talk on social media is the domain of a small yet passionate group of readers. Despite being a small proportion of teenagers, BookTokkers are building sizable social media followings, encouraging other teenagers to read and influencing what they read.
10 Anecdotal reports by booksellers credit BookTok with sparking a resurgence in reading among young people.
11 Avid BookTokker Mireille Lee (@alifeofliterature) describes how “I started reading again after six years when I came across BookTok for the first time”.
12 Until the pandemic, reading rates among teenagers were falling, but the pandemic and the rising popularity of BookTok meant that by 2021, among UK teenagers, a third reported reading more often.
13 Many booksellers now feature a #BookTok table, or publish “trending on #booktok” lists and boxed #booktok sets.
The magic of BookTok, in 5 parts
14 So, how does BookTok work? We’ve identified five key elements.
1. Playful and creative
15 First, TikTok is a very playful medium. Users can embed, re-use, replicate and imitate other posts in creative ways.
16 A “stitch” post, for example, allows a user to embed another post within their own, to mimic, critique or add humour. In one example, @penguin_teen uses her “stitch” post to co-opt another user’s advice on not blaming yourself, playfully blaming author Krystal Sutherland for her sleepless night reading her book.
17 A “duet” similarly embeds another post, but plays it in parallel to their own. For instance, in one post, @hellohardbacks compares @kaitlin.tracy’s pace in reading Samantha Shannon’s doorstopper The Priory of the Orange Tree to her own, in disbelief.
2. Algorithm creates unexpected recommendations
18 Second, while other platforms recommend content to viewers from the creators they follow, TikTok privileges recommendations based on its algorithm, which draws on posts users have viewed, liked and reposted. This can provide unexpected recommendations tailored to a viewer’s individual tastes.
3. Popularity of posts, not creators
19 Third, TikTok fame is based on the popularity of individual posts, not of creators. Australian BookTokker @hibas.library generally receives views in the low thousands, but one post on “Biggest book related pet peeves” reached over 150k. BookTokker @kelibrary’s account was less than two weeks old when their book bargain post received 393k views.
4. Connects book lovers
20 Fourth, BookTok creators connect with other book lovers – the platform’s key attraction. @luzlovesbooks explains: “I created my book account because I was longing to find a connection with people about something I am super passionate about.”
21 This provides a rare opportunity outside school to learn from each other about books, reading and book culture. We explore this sharing as “peer pedagogy”: a process in which young people teach their peers about something that they are passionate about.
5. Emotion is currency
22 Finally, TikTok’s currency is emotion and it is video-heavy, which together make it a much loved, performative medium among young readers.
23 This is why books like They Both Die at the End by Adam Silvera (2017) have experienced a spike in sales – because they lend themselves to emotional expression and hyper-visceral performances. It’s common for BookTok videos to feature readers crying.
But how is BookTok influencing what young people are reading?
24 Surprisingly, BookTokkers have been profiling many books that were published several years ago. Publishers are used to most books having a short shelf life, but BookTok is driving unexpected new demand among young readers for older books.
25 These books include It Ends With Us by Colleen Hoover, published in 2016, The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid (2017), and They Both Die at the End by Adam Silvera (2017). Dan Ruffino is managing director for Simon & Schuster, distributor of these titles in Australia. He says that in the midst of Covid-19 and paper shortages, “we’ve had to put in massive orders for reprints of books that were published years ago”.
26 BookTok is sometimes criticised for featuring only a small number of titles by white authors: mostly young adult, romance or fantasy titles. But books trending on BookTok often show teenagers looking for real-world diversity and complex themes.
27 For example, Booktok sensation The Song of Achilles by Madeleine Miller is a Greek myth retelling featuring a queer romantic relationship. Another BookTok favourite – Helen Hoang’s own-voices romance The Kiss Quotient – is about an autistic woman who hires a male escort to teach her how to date. Olivie Blake’s dark academic fantasy novel, The Atlas Six, explores philosophical and moral questions through a dystopian lens.
28 As an international community of book lovers, BookTok does not do much to encourage teenagers to read Australian books. However, a few Australian books, such as Canberra author Sally Thorne’s The Hating Game?, do have a BookTok following.
29 Libraries and booksellers are becoming adept at using BookTok as a conversation starter and will recommend Australian books to teenage readers based on titles they liked from the BookTok stable.
30 BookTok’s popularity reflects the zeitgeist of the pandemic. It offers a digital space for teenagers to connect with their peers and share authentic responses to books in a “youth friendly” way.
31 By showcasing teenagers who love books and are proud of their reading habits, BookTok inspires other young people to enjoy reading. And it creates trends that influence the types of books they read, sometimes in unexpected ways.
Katya Johanson, Professor of Audience Research, Deakin University; Amy Schoonens, Phd Candidate, Research Assistant, Queensland University of Technology; Bronwyn Reddan, Research Fellow, Deakin University; Leonie Rutherford, Associate professor, Deakin University, and Michael Dezuanni, Professor, Queensland University of Technology
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Reflect
After reading the article, use the following questions to reflect on the content of the article and your reading process. See the chapter about reflecting for a discussion of why this is a crucial step.
- Try to paraphrase the main idea in a sentence. This may be challenging because you have read the article only once. If you are struggling, do your best. You can refine this when you reread and summarize the article.
- Is the article primarily narrative, expository, or argumentative? What is the purpose of the article? In other words, why do you think the author wrote it?
- Which predictions were accurate, and which did you have to revise?
- As you previewed the article, you wrote questions. What questions remain unanswered after reading the article?
- What else do you want to know about the article or topic of the reading? Write down any additional questions.
- How did previewing the article help you to understand and engage with the text while reading?
- Where did you struggle to understand something in the text, and how did you work through it?
- What, if anything, could you have done differently to improve your reading process?
Summarize
Complete a summary of the article by following these steps. Make sure you have read the chapters about Reading to Summarize before proceeding with the summary.
- Reread the article and complete the Summary Notes. See Preparing to Summarize for a review of this topic and an example.
- Then, use your Summary Notes to write a one-paragraph summary of the article. See Writing a Summary for a review of this topic and an example. Make sure that you include in-text citations and the Work Cited.
- Use the self-assessment/peer review questions from Evaluating a Summary to self-assess your summary or invite a peer to provide feedback.
- Use the self-assessment or peer feedback to make changes to your summary.
Make sure you are comfortable with your summary before advancing to the response. If you misunderstand something in the article, then your response may be skewed based on that misunderstanding.
Respond
Write a response to the article by following these steps. Make sure you have read the chapters about Reading to Respond before proceeding with the summary.
- Use the Response Questions from Preparing to Respond to brainstorm possible ideas for your response. See the example in that same chapter.
- Read over your replies to the Response Questions. Choose one idea to write about in your response. Express that idea in a topic sentence. See Writing a Topic Sentence for a Response for examples. Ask a peer for feedback on your topic sentence.
- Brainstorm about possible support you could use in your response. See Generating Support for a Response for examples.
- Use your topic sentence and ideas from the list of support to write a one-paragraph response. See Writing a Response writing guidelines and examples. Make sure that you include the Work Cited and in-text citations for any quotes or specific ideas from the article.
- Use the self-assessment/peer review questions from Evaluating a Response to evaluate your response or have a peer provide feedback.
- Use the self-assessment or peer feedback to make improvements to your response.
Extend: Connect
Watch some videos on #BookTok. Then, either find a recommended book that you would like to read or make your own BookTok with recommendations for others to read. Finally, reflect on how you were able to connect with other readers through this experience.