From the introduction to section 1 of this volume:
In "Social Media, Critical Analysis, and Feminist Action: Popular YA's Role in Disseminating Theory Online," Jessica Caravaggio covers young adult romance's presence in virtual spaces. According to the Association of American Publishers, one of the largest data collectors of publishing statistics in North America, young adult fiction (or YA/teen fiction) is one of the only publishing categories currently experiencing significant growth. The YA genre is culturally dominant because of its centering of reader pleasure, but this growth is also due to the fact that popular YA texts like Stephenie Meyer's ongoing Twilight series and Sarah J. Maas's A Court of Thorns and Roses series take on a life of their own online, as communities of readers produce content of such a magnitude that discussion of these texts influences online culture.
Caravaggio explores online reader communities as a space for feminist analysis and a vehicle for political change. The deployment of feminist theoretical terms online such as toxic masculinity, male/female gaze, and intersectionality brings feminist theory into public forums and gives women and girls outside of academic spaces tools they can use to analyze texts from a feminist perspective. Within these communities, a culture of women engaged in critical feminist analysis is created wherein community members mobilize these terms to deconstruct male-female relations within popular YA fiction, exposing this genre as one that enables women and girls to better explore and understand their own desires for power, sex, and emotional connection. Thus, not only is this chapter immersed in the dynamic field of YA fiction, but it also examines how new ways of reading and new spaces for analysis are emerging in concert with social media platforms, a particularly critical facet to the study of YA fiction in the twenty-first century. (13-14)
From the introduction to section 1 of this volume: