The Social Fabric of Reading: Hybrid Literacy Infrastructures, Reader Identity, and Collective Reading Practices

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session Friday 7:45 am - Gold 3
  In Roundtable Session: Shaping Identities, Relationships, and Worlds Through Digital Literacies

Abstract

Discourses around reading have long been shaped by narratives of crisis—stories that frame literacy as a declining skill, in need of urgent remediation. This study offers a counter-narrative, exploring reading as a socially situated, relational, and infrastructurally shaped practice. Rather than asking “Are people reading?”, this research asks, “Where, how, why, and with whom is reading happening—and what does that mean for how we understand literacy today?” Using qualitative portraiture methodology, it examines how readers construct and negotiate identities across three hybrid sites: Bookstagram/BookTok, an independent bookstore, and a school library. Preliminary findings illustrate how collective reading practices are scaffolded by digital and physical infrastructures, enabling expansive reader identities rooted in community, connection, and resistance to crisis narratives.

Author

• Maggie Bryant, Baylor University