Abstract: Prominent among the social developments that the web 2.0 has facilitated is digital social reading (DSR):on many platforms there are functionalities for creating bookreviews,'inline'commenting on book texts, online story writing(often in the formof fanfiction),informal book discussions,book vlogs,and more. In this article,weargue that DSR offers unique possibilities for research into literature,reading,theimpact of reading and literary communica- tion.We also claim that in this context computational tools are especially relevant, making DSR a field particularly suit- ablefor the application of Digital Humanities methods. We draw up an initial categorization of research aspects of DSR and briefly examine literature for each category. We distinguish between studies on DSR that use it as a lens to study wider processesof literary exchange as opposed to studies for which the DSR culture is a phenomenon interesting in its own right.Via seven examples of DSR research,we discuss the chosen approaches and their connection to research questions in literarystudies.

Key words: SNS, Reading, Case studies