From Instapoetry to BookTube, contemporary literary cultures and practices are increasingly intertwined with social media. In this lively and wide-ranging study, Bronwen Thomas explores how social media provides new ways of connecting with and rediscovering established literary works and authors while also facilitating the emergence of unique and distinctive forms of creative expression. The book takes a 360˚ approach to the subject, combining analysis of current forms and practices with an examination of how social media fosters ongoing collaborative discourse amongst both informal and formal literary networks, and demonstrating how the participatory practices of social media have the potential to radically transform how literature is produced, shared and circulated. The first study of its kind to focus specifically on social media, Literature and Social Media provides a timely and engaging account of the state of the art, while interrogating the rhetoric that so often accompanies discussion of the ‘new’ in this context.
Author(s): Bronwen Thomas
Series: (Literature and Contemporary Thought)
Edition: 1
Publisher: Routledge
Year: 2020
Language: English
Pages: 164
Tags: Literary Criticism, Literary Theory, Social Media
Cover
Half Title
Series Page
Title Page
Copyright Page
Table of Contents
List of figures
Note
Acknowledgements
Series Editors’ Preface
Introduction
Why ‘literature’ and ‘social media’ are not antithetical
The rise of social media and key issues/critiques
Technology and literature
Key theoretical approaches and influences
Forms of social media
Implications of social media for literature
Methods
1. From the Holodeck to the Tweetdeck: electronic literature, interactivity and participation
The ‘End of Books’?
Defining the field
The Brave New World of hypertext fiction
Beyond hypertext and the impact of Web 2.0
Readers/audiences/users
Fans, participatory cultures and transmedia storytelling
Literature on the go
Network aesthetics and the politics of new media
2. Old wine in new bottles? Retelling and reimagining the literary with social media
Social media accounts based on literary works and authors
New forms of participation
Generating faux classics, traditions and myths
New wine in old bottles: incorporating new technology in
the novel
Social media in the novel
3. The Twittersphere as literary playground
Twitter as a platform for creativity
‘Small stories’ and the need for new methods and approaches
The emergence of Twitterfiction
Experiments with automation
‘Nowness’ and liminality
Distribution
Genre and audience
Poetry and performance
4. Canons and curators: accessing, preserving and evaluating the literary on social media
The curatorial turn
Canons and fanons
Curating the everyday
Celebrity curators
Literature on display
Tracking and cataloguing the literary
Literary data
5. Literary movements in the network era
The problem with ‘community’
Net-working
Literary movements
Instapoetry
Wu Ming
Alt Lit
6. New literary cultures and markets
Authorship
Fans, amateurs and reader–writers
Literary advice
New publishing models
Festivals and prizes
Mass reading events
Reader power
Afterword
Glossary
References
Index
