This post was originally published in the ETL533 forums

I decided to narrow this down to an area of particular interest: webtoons. This interest emerged from my own context where a) students sometimes recommend webtoons to me b) I have read print comics and found some of the peculiarities and even (as I saw it in print) deficiencies of their layout are likely a direct result of first being published online/as webtoons c) finding that books I couldn’t get from my local library or bookshop last year were being fan-translated online, and that this was also happening with comics.  Perhaps unsurprisingly, given the popularity of the phenomenon internationally (it is Korean in origin), there is a range of research about or connected to webtoons and, happily, from my perspective, much of it is positive about the potential and benefits of the form.

Lynn (2016) provides a background to the growth of webtoons, citing the technological, economic and political conditions and support that helped but weighting the quality and diversity of the form as decisive. Cho et al. (2022) explored the appeal of webtoons and found they provided many of the emotional, personal, artistic, and habit-forming benefits associated with or hoped for from print but supported this with appeal factors unique to the form, highlighting especially the community and cultural aspects. Kim (2023) studied non-Korean webtoons fans and found they weren’t just reading for pleasure but explicitly using the form to teach themselves Korean, embodying out-of-school and transnational multimodal literacy. Similarly, the activity in webtoon discussion forums was examined by Jeon (2021) to provide examples of how these digital texts formed a basis for cross-cultural discussions about ethics, social justice, and understanding, something like English teachers often hope to do with prescribed texts.

Webtoons also provide or inspire as a platform for creative work. Nam and Jung (2022) talk about how the fan translation process has social, linguistic, career, and personal growth benefits, all dimensions we would hope for in education. Shim et al. (2020) highlighted the participatory and decentralised nature of webtoons and web novels, reminding us of the attraction of these forms of reading and creating. This was also the topic of Yecies et al. (2020), who, from a more economic perspective, were interested in the innovation that comes from harnassing a motivated fanship ‘crowd’ for collective work. In a more specific case, Yu et al. (2023) experimented with a multilingual text to image platform, similar to AI, where learners created narratives but were motivated by the webtoons aspect.

Thinking about the types of readers that enjoy webtoons, it was pleasing to see Nam and Jung (2022) looking at reading habits across multiple platforms and noting that the webtoons readers they spoke to are academically successful, globally-engaged, flexible, and multi-dimensional readers, which likely goes against the stereotypes some (still) have over comics readers both off and online.

Flipping to the teacher’s perspective and thinking about how some of my own colleagues are resistant to both comics in general and digital reading of any form, Loh and Sun (2022) say educators can support adolescents’ reading by being knowledgeable about digital resources like webtoons. For them, there must be a holistic ecosystem approach that allows readers to personalise their reading experience, rather than be constrained by ‘just print’ (Loh & Sun, 2022). By expanding our definitions of reading, and the types of text we use and discuss, we can address concerns about a decline in reading for enjoyment.

Based on these readings, I would like to review a webtoon for my first assessment task. It has been instructive to realise that my own prejudice against webcomics, coming from my preference for print comics, is not so different from my colleagues’ general prejudice against all comics. I would like to explore the form and its unique qualities, even though, as an outsider to the community not engaging in the discussion, translation or creation, it occurs to me that I will be missing much of the appeal.

References

Cho, H., Adkins, D., & Pham, N. M. (2022). “I only wish that I had had that growing up”: Understanding Webtoon’s Appeals and Characteristics as an Emerging Reading Platform. Proceedings of the Association for Information Science and Technology, 59(1), 44-54.

Jeon, A. (2021). Care as a Border‐Crossing Language: The Webtoon Reader Discussion Forum as Mediascape. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 64(6), 657-664.

Kim, H. (2023). ‘I read webtoon every day!’: young adult k-pop fans’ language learning and literacies with korean webcomics. Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics, 14(1), 104-118.

Loh, C. E., & Sun, B. (2022). The impact of technology use on adolescents’ leisure reading preferences. Literacy, 56(4), 327-339.

Loh, C. E., Sun, B., & Lim, F. V. (2023). ‘Because I’m always moving’: a mobile ethnography study of adolescent girls’ everyday print and digital reading practices. Learning, Media and Technology, 1-20.

Lynn, H. G. (2016) Korean webtoons: explaining growth. Research Center for Korean Studies Annual, Kyushu University 16, 1–13.

Nam, J., & Jung, Y. (2022). Exploring fans’ participation in digital media: Transcreation of webtoons. Telecommunications Policy, 46(10), 102407.

Shim, A., Yecies, B., Ren, X., & Wang, D. (2020). Cultural intermediation and the basis of trust among webtoon and webnovel communities. Information, Communication & Society, 23(6), 833-848.

Yecies, B., Yang, J. J., & Lu, Y. (2020). Korean webtoons and collective innovation: expanding Europe’s creative industries through competitive localization. Innovation: The European Journal of Social Science Research, 33(4), 459-473.

Yu, K., Kim, H., Kim, J., Chun, C., & Kim, P. (2023). A Study on Generating Webtoons Using Multilingual Text-to-Image Models. Applied Sciences, 13(12), 7278.