Brazilian booktubers: literary channels to encourage reading

Abstract

Booktubers are producers of videos with literary content that encourage the reading of books and share the production in the virtual space of YouTube. The objective was to investigate the main literary channels and the content conveyed by the most influential booktubers in Brazil. Quantitative-qualitative research carried out on the YouTube platform with the descriptors ”booktubers Brasil”, ”booktuber Brasil” and ”Brazilian booktubers”, to locate national channels with a number of subscribers equal to or greater than 100 thousand and access the videos and statistics correspondents. The results showed six channels – ”Bel Rodrigues”, ”Ler antes de morrer”, ”Tatianagfeltrin”, ”Ler até amanhecer”, ”Vá ler um livro”, and ”Melina Souza” – and 18 videos. It was found that, together, they bring together 2,910,000 subscribers, with an annual average of 624 posts and 34,783,434 views. All the influencers are young white women, who, with remarkable verbal and corporal fluency, review different literary genres, densified by historical, journalistic, social. Verbal-visual elements such as cinematographic scenes, musical fragments, photographs and highlighted texts illustrate the reports. It is concluded that booktubers transform YouTube into an attractive learning and reading incentive scenario. Despite the expressive amount of access, it is inaccessible to those lacking in Digital Information and Communication Technologies.

Keywords:
Booktubers; YouTube; Reading; Education