Digital humanities and reading on Twitter. "A placebo that heals in times of COVID-19"

ABSTRACT

This article follows a computational cultural criticism to analyse the reading practices on Twitter during the COVID-19 pandemic. It analyses tweets that reference Jorge Luis Borges and Clarice Lispector, which were extracted and analysed using textual mining tools. The article demonstrates that both authors were mobilized in two different senses: in a therapeutic sense, as a way to deal with loneliness and suffering, and also to process collective and social transformations, expressing support or criticism of governmental politics dealing with COVID-19. In those ways, the article shows that reading practices on Twitter reveal the multiples ways in which people experienced the pandemic, and shaped collective and subjective experience.

KEYWORDS:
Digital Humanities; Reading Practices; Global South; Clarice Lispector; Jorge Luis Borges; Social Media