Children Reading an Online Genre: Heterogeneity in Interpretive Work

In this article, a conceptual repertoire from audience reception studies is mobilized to interpret findings from conversations with children navigating the online genre of social networking sites. Divergence and consensus across age, in children's perception of authorial presence and intention, perceptions of other readers/users, and their collection of stories around the text, is indicated with the use of a repertoire derived from many decades of research with audience reception analysis. It is concluded that the act of interpretation was always one that involved a range of responsibilities (literacies) on the part of the audience/spectator and in the case of textually unstable, immersive media, new media literacies as interpretive work continue to involve a range of responsibilities in navigating textual conventions, figuring out opportunities, coping with contextual resources and restraints, and tackling interruptions in the text