Graphic novels through the lens of Goodreads reviews: Artistic, textual, or blend of both?

In this study, a textual analysis of the linguistic characteristics of Goodreads user-generated reviews associated with popular graphic novels revealed reviewers’ rich evaluations of both textual and visual characteristics of the novels as well as the embodied orientation of the reviewers’ narrations, wherein positive emotions associated with the reading experience dominated. Overall, the blend of users’ unique perceptions of textual and visual characteristics of graphic novels contributes to the genre’s vivid representation and discoverability. The machine analysis of user-generated reviews revealed a high rate of function words, pronouns, and auxiliary verbs, which may suggest reviewers’ social orientation. This high rate of function words and the overall positive tone of the reviews may also be interpreted as reviewers’ attempts to promote their reviews and influence others’ reading choices.