Just Here for the Comments: Lurking as Literacy Practice

We all sometimes ’lurk’ in online spaces without posting or engaging, just reading the posts and comments. But neither reading nor lurking are ever passive acts. In fact, readers of social media are making decisions and taking grassroots actions on multiple dimensions. Unpacking this understudied phenomenon, this book challenges the conventional perspective of what counts as participatory online culture. Presenting lurking as a communication and literacy practice that resists dominant power structures, it offers an innovative approach to digital qualitative methods. Unique and original in its subject, this is a call for internet researchers to broaden their methods to include lurkers’ participation and presence.

Gina Sipley is Assistant Professor in the Department of English, SUNY Nassau Community College. Sipley is a first generation college graduate. AUTHOR JUST WANTS THE LAST SENTENCE ON HER BIO, MESAAGE FROM BAHAR 16 Jan 2023