Reading Digital Fiction

该项目将提高公众对数字小说的参与度，并提供经验性的分析，以展示读者如何与数字小说互动。数字小说是为电脑编写和阅读的小说，可以是基于网络或应用程序的(针对平板电脑和智能手机)，也可以通过CD-ROM访问。然而，数字小说与电子书不同。数字小说不是作为纸质小说的数字版本存在，而是所谓的“天生数字”--也就是说，如果它们被从数字媒介中移除，它们将失去一些美学和/或结构形式和意义。例如，它们可能包含超链接、运动图像、小游戏或音效。此外，与电子书中读者以线性方式从一页移动到另一页不同，在许多数字小说中，读者在构建叙事中扮演着一个角色，要么通过选择超链接，要么通过控制角色在故事世界中的旅程。因此，数字小说要求读者在整个阅读体验中与叙事互动。随着电子阅读器(如Kindle和相关的iPad应用程序)的可用性和普及度不断提高，电子书正越来越多地被广告、讨论和制作。它们的文化、社会和经济意义正在增长，印刷出版商现在将大部分营销努力集中在这一领域。作为商业产品，电子阅读器只提供给那些有能力购买的人，但许多数字小说是免费的。虽然转向电子出版可能意味着数字流畅度的提高，并扩大了人们对数字文本的普遍兴趣，但公众对天生的数字小说的认识和参与程度仍然相对较低。该项目旨在提高公众对数字小说的认识和参与，以便能够更包容地接触这些文本，并在相关的步骤中，更广泛地增加数字扫盲。在谢菲尔德、班戈和阿伯里斯特威斯举行的一系列公众参与活动中，读者将了解诞生的数字小说。他们与文本的接触将提高数字素养，鼓励更明确地了解一般的叙述形式和结构，并认识到数字文本与印刷文本有何不同。这包括：如何识别和回应数字环境中不同类型的情节和叙述；如何阅读利用图像、声音和互动导航元素的文本；如何将阅读和游戏结合起来；如何批判性地使用数字技术。该项目还旨在对研究人员对数字小说的分析进行实证测试。首先，研究人员将考虑读者如何处理数字小说的多模式方面--即声音、图像和文本等不同模式的组合。研究人员还将考虑读者作为其行为的结果在叙事中期望发生的事情与他们实际发现的情况之间的关系。最后，研究人员将调查不同的叙事形式是否会影响数字小说读者与其所描述的虚拟世界之间的关系。利用包括问卷、焦点小组和访谈在内的一系列数据收集策略，将从研讨会参与者以及属于既定阅读社区(例如电子文献组织成员)的更成熟的数字小说读者那里收集读者反应数据，并将其纳入研究人员的分析。其结果将是对读者如何与数字小说互动的更有力的、更关键的、基于经验的理解。该项目的这一部分还将通过提供一种可复制的方法来测试读者对数字文本的参与度，并更深入地了解读者一般是如何与虚构叙事互动的，从而为更广泛的认知语言学文学理论提供信息。

This project will increase public engagement with digital fiction and provide empirically substantiated analyses to show how readers interact with digital fiction. Digital Fiction is fiction that is written for and read from a computer and can be Web- or app-based (for tablets and smartphones) or accessed via CD-ROMs. Digital fictions are different to e-books, however. Rather than existing as a digital version of a print novel, digital fictions are what are known as "born digital" - that is, they would lose something of their aesthetic and/or structural form and meaning if they were removed from the digital medium. For example, they may contain hyperlinks, moving images, mini-games or sound effects. Further, unlike e-books in which the reader moves from one page to another in a linear fashion, in many digital fictions, the reader has a role in constructing the narrative, either by selecting hyperlinks or by controlling a character's journey through the storyworld. Digital fictions therefore require that the reader interacts with the narrative throughout the reading experience. With the increasing availability and popularity of e-readers, such as the Kindle and associated iPad applications, e-books are increasingly being advertised, discussed and produced. Their cultural, social and economic significance is growing with print publishers now focussing much of their marketing effort in this area. As commercial products, e-readers are only available to those that can afford to buy them, but much digital fiction is available for free. While the move to e-publishing might suggest increased digital fluency and amplified general interest in digital textuality, public awareness of and engagement with born digital fiction remains relatively low. The project aims to raise public awareness of and engagement with digital fiction in order to permit a more inclusive engagement with these texts and, in a related step, increase digital literacies more broadly. In a series of public engagement activities in Sheffield, Bangor and Aberystwyth, readers will learn about born digital fiction. Their engagement with the texts will enhance digital literacies and encourage a more explicit understanding of narrative form and structure in general as well as awareness of how digital texts are different from print. This includes: how to identify and respond to different types of plot and narration in digital environments; how to read texts that utilise images, sound and interactive navigational elements; how to combine reading and gaming; how to use digital technologies critically. The project also aims to empirically test the researchers' analyses of digital fiction. Primarily the researchers will consider how readers process the multimodal aspects of digital fiction - that is, the combination of different modes such as sound, images and text. The researchers will also consider the relationship between what readers expect to happen in the narrative as a consequence of their actions and what they actually find. Finally the researchers will investigate whether different forms of narration affect the relationship between the reader of digital fiction and the fictional world that it describes. Using a range of data collection strategies including questionnaires, focus groups and interviews, reader response data will be gathered from workshop participants as well as more established readers of digital fiction who belong to established reading communities (e.g. members of the Electronic Literature Organisation) and incorporated into the researchers' analyses. The result will be a more robust and, crucially, empirically based understanding of how readers interact with digital fiction. This part of the project will also inform wider cognitive-linguistic theories of literature by providing a replicable methodology for testing reader engagement with digital texts and well as a deeper understanding of how readers interact with fictional narratives in general.