Messenger vs. Message: A Nethnographic Study of Where’d My Giggle Go? Reviews

• In Event: Saturday Roundtable Session 3:05 pm
  In Roundtable Session: Knowing, Reading, Leading, and Integrating (Table 24)

Abstract

This multi-sited nethnographic study analyzes the discourse around Max Lucado’s 2021 picture book, Where’d My Giggle Go?. Despite winning an award for evangelical Christian content, it includes no overt religious material; instead, it is labeled and marketed as a social-emotional learning (SEL) book for classrooms. At the time that it won this award, political debates began conflating critical race theory (CRT) with social-emotional learning. This study investigates how discourse on multiple reviewing sites constructs the social identities of the book’s readers, and how these reviewers construct and perform relationships with Max Lucado and the evangelical community. We aim to understand how the social, political, and cultural commitments of this community are positioned in the genre of consumer reviews.

Authors

• Meghan Whitfield, University of Massachusetts - Amherst

• Gretchen Hohmeyer, University of Massachusetts - Amherst