Literature and digital space

New literacies in the Book Creator platform

Abstract

This paper analyzes the Book Creator platform through a New Literacies perspective. We mobilize notions such as “new ethos” and “new mindset”, by Lankshear and Knobel (2007), and hybrid space and cyborg, by Haraway (2000). Using an applied, qualitative approach, we analyze a digital literary work produced and made available on the mentioned platform by a middle school student. We identified aspects of a new ethos and a new mentality in the production of this type of book, as it was elaborated following the logic of distribution, sharing, the public sphere and experimentation. Despite limiting interactivity, we observed that the analyzed work also adapts to new literacies, because it provides an experience mediated by technologies, bringing together multimodal and multimedia resources that make it a product in motion for the reader to contemplate. We also point out possible contributions of working with digital works to the development of reading and writing skills, such as the decentralization of authorship, adaptation to the digital age, and the dynamism of reading; in addition to limitations, such as limited access to technology and costs, lack of digital literacy, and challenges in verifying the authenticity of the content. We conclude that platforms such as Book Creator are potentially favorable tools in the teaching of the mother tongue, but their effectiveness depends on adequate mediation to become an effective practice of new literacies.