ABSTRACT
This chapter provides an introduction to digital fiction and establishes the methodological approach taken in the book. It defines digital fiction by outlining six generations – hypertext fiction, hypermedia fiction, cybertext, literary games, social-media fiction, app fiction, and VR fiction – and three waves of scholarship: a “first wave” of hypertext theory that used textual models as a means of conceptualising the form of digital fiction; a “second wave” of research that investigated digital fiction via narratological, stylistic, and semiotic analyses of individual works; and a newly proposed “third wave” of empirical digital fiction research which synthesises analyses of works with the analysis of reader response data. We outline our third-wave medium-conscious reader response methodology by situating it within research paradigms from cognitive stylistics, cognitive narratology, and digital media studies. We show the value of both experimental and naturalistic approaches to reader response research and argue for our predominantly qualitative approach to data collection and analysis so as to capture the way in which reading experiences are conceptualised and expressed in discursive-idiosyncratic ways. We outline our new medium-conscious approach to analysing reader data which utilises and expands Phelan’s and Peplow et al.’s print-derived framework to include our concept of “medial” response. We define medial responses as an audience’s interest in, awareness of and/or attention to the medium in which a text is produced and received, and argue a focus on medial responses should apply to reader data across media. The chapter ends with a synopsis of the other chapters in the book.
