ABSTRACT
Online reading communities have harnessed hypersocial participatory internet culture for sustained focus on long immersive works. Social interaction among readers is a factor of aggregators and their gatekeeping function in the digital publishing industry. The individual reading experience has been enhanced by digital design’s development toward immersive formats aimed at diminishing distraction. Ethnographies of reader interaction reveal a revival of intellectual culture in online communities on web forums including Goodreads and social media threads such as #1book140, hosted by The Atlantic and Jeff Howe.
