so I’m going to just start by reading a
couple of lines for you guys
mr. and mrs. Dursley of number four
privet drive were proud to say that they
were perfectly normal thank you very
much they were the last people you’d
expect to be involved in anything
strange or mysterious because they just
didn’t hold with such nonsense so rather
than asking you guys if you were
interested in children’s literature
which I kind of assume probably is a big
no I’m guessing that a few of you here
might be interested in Harry Potter is
that right so in my research I’m really
interested in how young people are
engaging with big books like Harry
Potter in the online realm so whether
young people are creating fanfiction
participating in corporate sites like
Pottermore or using social media to
attack these corporate sites when they
do things that the fans don’t like so I
think these sites have enormous
opportunities for young people to engage
around the literature they love but
there’s a dark side to participating as
well so there’s three main points here
to my talk the first is that site owners
can give and they can take away the
second point is there is no such thing
as privacy online how many of you are
aware of that no such thing as privacy
online no matter what and the third
point is that fans have real power so
children’s books are really big business
and you can sort of talk about
children’s literature as before Harry
and after Harry so in 1997 when the
first book in the series was published
in the UK no editor in New York would
ever have believed that a children’s
book could land on the New York Times
bestseller list no one would believe
that a six-year-old child would read a
novel of 300 pages or more and certainly
no one could have predicted the enormous
commercial success of this series right
now Harry Potter is a twenty five
billion dollar series about seven
billion are from book sales seven
billion are from movie and DVD sales
seven billion from toys and licensed
merchandise a few other billion from
assorted others
in addition to this commercial success
there’s also this scholarly interest
from people like me so there are
conferences and papers and chapters and
all kinds of things written about this
series so Harry Potter has really
changed the landscape for children’s
literature in a very very big way one of
the reasons for the incredible success
of this series is because of the world
building that exists within the series
so when you think about Harry Potter if
I just say something like Diagon Alley
or the cupboard under the stairs or
Hogwarts even if you haven’t seen the
movies if you’ve read the books I’m
pretty sure that you have an image in
your mind of what those things look like
and that’s because of the incredible
world that JK Rowling has built in the
books because of that the series has
appealed two boys and two girls two
adults and two children and it really
lends itself to all kinds of fan
extensions so whether you’re interested
in writing fan fiction or doing fan art
or all kinds of other things there’s
amazing opportunities within this world
that JK Rowling has created now JK
Rowling has always had kind of a tenuous
relationship with her fans on one hand
fans are really good for an author like
this because they become an instant
audience they enable peer-to-peer
marketing all kinds of other things and
some would also argue that the fan sites
that arose around the same time as the
series came about you know have really a
lot to do with the success of the series
so really the series came about the same
time that the internet really got big so
all of those things together combine to
really make this this enormous
commercial success but JK Rowling has
also gone after some of these sites for
example the Harry Potter lexicon or the
very famous example of Heather lovers
online site called the daily profit
where she sued those people so there’s
sort of like this tense relationship
between fans and creators when it comes
to these worlds but the first point here
is that site owners can give so the
these sites can be amazing things and
one thing that you can do if you’re a
site owner if you’re tired of the sites
that are appearing online if you want to
sort of draw away from that you can
create the very best site yourself and
JK Rowling did that to an extent when
she created the Pottermore site so the
original Pottermore site which was
created in
2011 was very much book based had all
kinds of games and participatory things
that were based on the books so young
people could create potions cast spells
duel each other
earn points for the house cup very much
totally linked to the book and very
gamified content so that was really
great but one of the problems with these
types of sites is that when you’re
dealing with sites for young people it’s
super important to have moderation you
need to have the moderation for multiple
reasons one is that when you’re dealing
with a young audience you have the kind
of problems that you have in middle
school you have bad language and
bullying and somebody read the book
before everybody else and so now they’re
gonna post the ending of the story so
you have all those kinds of things
you also have creepier elements which
are adult predators who could be within
these sites so moderation is something
that is super important but moderation
is also super expensive so the idea of
having you know human moderators cost a
lot of money and probably is the most
boring job in the world to sit there and
read that content and take out bad
language for example there’s also
algorithms that will do that for you
that will strip out the bad content
whether or not they’re actually training
dogs to this I don’t know but it could
be they could they would probably do it
so the moderation thing becomes a big
problem and it was becoming a problem in
the beta version of the Pottermore site
so in April of 2015 the Pottermore site
owners decided just to stop all online
interactions so they stripped out the
ability for fans to post comments or to
talk to each other or to play certain
games online and the fans were super
super upset about that and they started
reacting via Twitter with hashtags so in
2011 when the beta site came about the
iPad had been invented smart phones were
out there but they were not nearly as
pervasive as they are today so with all
of these things together when the site
owners decided they needed to really you
know research who was actually using
this site they realized in addition to
the problems with moderation they
realized that the people who are
actually using the Pottermore site were
kids between the ages of 8 and 10
originally but they had migrated so as
the tools became more more pervasive all
this
the site owners realized that the people
who are actually using the site were
teenage girls ages around 15 and up so
very different audience from the
original site so with that they decided
to completely change the site in April
2015 they disabled the comments and then
in September they relaunched it again in
for the September relaunch I started
studying some of these tweets that were
going on where so once the users were
blocked within the site from from
posting comments they moved to Twitter
and they started using two hashtags like
hash tag Pottermore or hash tag dead
Pottermore or hash tag bring back the
old Pottermore to continue the
conversations that they had been having
within the site so in studying these
tweets this leads to the second point
which is there’s no such thing as
privacy online so you may know that when
you’re participating within a corporate
owned site that the site owners can
gather all kinds of information from you
and if you take the time to read the end
user licensing agreement you know you’re
signing away a lot of rights when you
post within those sites and technically
the same is true for a site like Twitter
but on Twitter where young people are
posting you know using a handle or
disguising their location you may think
that you’re safer but with a simple
Twitter analysis which I did with my
colleague Ahmad you can really see so
much about young people which raises
important ethical concerns and doing
this kind of research as well so the
tweets that we saw were around multiple
themes and a couple of them were these
the first is the angry gamers and these
are the young people who have been
participating in the beta version of the
site who suddenly were really upset that
they couldn’t access their houses their
badges their potions their galleons all
of this content had been removed the
second group were the lost identity
group and these are the ones who just
really felt so immersed in the
Pottermore environment that one it was
all taken away they felt like they had
no identity they felt like they’ve been
kicked out of Hogwarts and some of them
felt like they were muggles they weren’t
part of the Wizarding community anymore
so they’re just devastated and there
were tons and tons of tweets by the
second relaunch by September 22nd or
right a couple days after that there
were 7500 tweets that were complaining
about the site so this is not
insignificant at all just within a
couple days
and in summary this is what several sort
of expressed about the Pottermore site
obviously this one wasn’t moderated
whoops
but the September relaunch what happened
was instead of just ignoring the fans
like they did in April when they took
down the ability to to comment in
September all of a sudden this part or
more correspondent appeared on the site
which kind of indicates that the
Pottermore site owners were super aware
of what was going on on Twitter and
other social media so instead of just
ignoring the fans all of a sudden this
person I assume appeared within the
Pottermore site and also on Twitter and
this person was responding to the tweets
both the positive tweets and the
negative tweets which kind of lends
authenticity a little bit to the site
right also shows that you know fans were
being listened to and this leads to the
third point which is that fans have real
power so the fact that these site owners
couldn’t really ignore the negative
tweets that were going on shows that the
fans by rallying around these hashtags
were able to really make the site owners
sit up and pay attention to them and the
reality is that Harry Potter fans are
very large a number they are highly
vocal and hugely loyal so really they
could unite and and rally and change
things and by January even more changes
have been made as a response to fans one
of the things that the site owners were
really upset about was or the fans were
really upset about within changes to the
site was that they could no longer be
sorted with the sorting hat activity so
that was brought back the only problem
was if you’d been sorted earlier and you
were a ravenclaw or a Gryffindor or
whatever else if you got restored you
could suddenly be a Hufflepuff and fans
were super upset about that and I’ll
just say I’m also a Hufflepuff so it’s
not that bad
but um other new additions were added as
well like wand selection and Patronus
selection and those things were hugely
popular but still the fans were saying
that the most magical thing for them
about the Pottermore site was the
ability for fans to communicate with
each other and that makes a lot of sense
to me so you might wonder why I’m
interested in studying all of this so
the reality is when
I was a child I went to nine schools
between kindergarten and twelfth grade
we moved all the time the two consistent
things in my life were my little sister
who’s pictured there and access to books
so no matter where we lived we would
always go to the library and scout out
local bookstores and we would always you
know I was always reading so it’s really
no surprise that as an adult I worked
first in children’s publishing for many
years then in children’s librarianship
and I’m a professor of children’s
literature and librarianship here at
Kent State so this idea of this global
connected community of fans around
something like reading like Pottermore
that would have been super exciting to
me as a child because think about it you
have this online portable group of
friends that you can take with you
wherever you go
but on a broader level I also think that
these kinds of sites connect young
people around books and these sites can
transcend borders of geography of
language of culture of customs of all
kinds of things and I really think that
that is an amazing thing so in
conclusion I just want to say that you
know site owners have this power to
create wonderful sites for young people
and the power to take them away but that
they also have to listen very carefully
to their fans because these fans have
enormous power they’re totally capable
of shaping the content within the sites
even if they’re pushed beyond the walls
of the site they’re able to go on social
media and via hashtag continue the
conversations that they want to have
within this site so these online
friendships are worth fighting for in my
mind so if the site owners can sort out
the issues with moderation which is
obviously a huge thing I think that
these global connected communities of
young readers around the world can
really show us that we are connected and
that we have more things in common that
perhaps we otherwise think so thank you
very much [Applause]