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Tag: change over time

E-valuating reading in the digital world

Thinking about reading in the world of digital…

There is no denying that the way we read has changed. Scholars and researchers (like Hayles) point to the changes in the physical and cognitive ways we read, drawing attention to different modalities of reading, such as hyperreading or, emerging now on a massive scale, machine reading. These are usually compared with the present-for-centuries method of close reading. As a result of these evolving practices, our attention shifts from deep focus to skimming, pecking, and falling down the rabbit hole of hyper….

However, cognitive changes are one thing; what is also being transformed is the way we perceive reading, how we choose to read, what we choose to read, but more importantly, what is the “cultural value” and value in general that we attribute to a text, reading as an activity, readers and writers as people, etc. In the essay ‘Charting the Digital Literary Sphere’, Simone Murray takes a closer look at the essential domain that materialised with the ubiquitous emergence of “cyber”  – the titular “digital literary sphere”. “Substack”, “Booktok”, “bookstagram”, “Goodreads”, the omnipresent Amazon.com… all the digital platforms, nooks and crannies of the Web that have already transformed and are still reconstructing the reading culture. What comes with this handiwork of the digital age has two sides. On the one hand, to use Murray’s phrasing, the digital literary sphere ‘erodes many of the traditional gatekeeper roles’, opening up discussions surrounding literature to amateurs and validating their taste. On the other hand, these developments ‘radically [undercut] the cultural-arbiter status of professional literary critics’ and in effect ‘”literature” […] becomes that which the digital literary sphere deems to be literature’. What, however, are the processes that are enmeshed in the digital redefinition of “literature”?

Crucially, we need to consider the cultural production of the contemporary digital literary sphere. David Wright draws attention to the ongoing ‘shift from word-of-mouth recommendation to algorithms recognised by software, in which […] the forms of “value” identified and exchanged by reviewers – are coded and automated’. As an example, the critic focuses on the “List Culture”, think: the trending books, “Top 100 books to read before you die”, book prizes, and the top 10 books on Amazon.com. And yes, I agree with Wright that “the list”, as well as (not mentioned by the author) bookstagram posts, Goodreads statictics, etc.,  [are] also a way of ‘negotiating the “endless” literary choice of the digital age’, because, it is true, the sheer volume of available books to read can be overwhelming. But! when looking at these developments, I cannot help but think about the processes of production, marketing, commodification, and consumption…

In the digital world, or the “digital literary sphere”, reading becomes inextricably tangled with the omnipresent standardised data – data about our reading, our tastes, “best of …” lists based on our ratings out of 5 stars, views and shares of posts, comments that unavoidably attract internet trolls, and so on. This all seems symptomatic of “knowing capitalism”.

“Knowing capitalism” is Nigel Thrift’s term (mentioned also in Wright’s article) that refers to an economic system in which data and information function as means of attributing value, specifically capital value. In such a societal structure, institutions and corporations use the collected data to generate profit for themselves but also to control human experience. In the digital world of reading, our tastes, reading activities, reviews, book culture in general, are being constantly observed, analysed and converted into massive amounts of data for the book industry conglomerates that then, as Wright puts it, ‘offer a means of organising and prioritising resources in the book industry such that they are “actively participating in the doings of the book world.”‘

Reading has thus entered, in Murray’s words, ‘a hazardous terrain of valorizing and consecrating authorities’. TO me it seems that reading is becoming kind of a dance between what seems anti-reductionist “sophisticated” reading practices of those interested in ” the content” of the book, how it is conveyed, questions and reflections it leads to; and, the commercial cover-based colourful world of 5 out of 5 best reads according to … I suppose, in a way, the value of reading is also changing, from the cultural, intellectual value of critical thinking to commercial, profit-oriented valuation.

 

 

Articles I mentioned:

Hayles, N. Katherine. ‘How We Read: Close, Hyper, Machine’. Modern Language Association, 2010, pp. 62–79.
Murray, Simone. “Charting the Digital Literary Sphere.” Contemporary Literature, vol. 56, no. 2, 2015, pp. 311–39. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/24735010. Accessed 28 Jan. 2026.
Wright, David. ‘Literary Taste and List-Culture in a Time of ‘Endless Choice’’. From Codex to Hypertext: Reading at the Turn of the Twenty-First Century, edited by Anouk Lang, University of Massachusetts Press, 2012, p. pp 108-123. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ed/detail.action?docID=4533124.

Prestige vs popularity: constrasting the literary ecosystem

The digital ecosystem of literary prestige seems to be returning to where prestige came from previously. That is to say–where Ezra Pound’s patronage was instrumental in slingshoting the careers of H.D. and T.S. Eliot, now patronage networks have arisen again. The increased volume of published work has made it increasingly difficult for aspiring authors to access prestige networks, but a sure bet is the support of a contemporary distinguished author. Where book lists of “100 books all men should read before they die” was a way for the working and middle classes to understand what flavour of taste had been baked in the upper echelons of society, now the Booker Prize determines what literature is “good”. For all that the literary ecosystem has changed in the past few decades, through the rise of social media and the fall of libraries, a few things seem to have stayed the same or at least be returning to centre now.

Popularity, on the other hand, now comes from completely different sources than you might expect in the pre-internet era. The overwhelming amount of content available drives readers to desperately search for any way to discern which of the thousands of fantasy novels they might enjoy. Film and TV adaptations are the preeminent solution here: successfully adapted books see a matching increase in book sales and literary popularity. Reviewers continue from times before the internet, but take a far different form from a write-up in the side column of a newspaper–everyday people explain their bubbly insights on the latest romantasy novel and become BookStagram or BookTok influencers, guiding popular taste to such an extent that going viral on BookTok can sell out an author’s presales. It’s no surprise then that traditional publishers are scrutinizing BookTok closely to try and identify what exactly it is that the nebulous “they” want. They don’t often succeed in replicating individual book successes.

With such a difficulty in finding an audience for any book, it’s no surprise that some publishers are going to the extremes. Celebrities from a variety of backgrounds are transitioning to publishing not just autobiographies and reflections about their life and field, but even publishing works that have no seeming distinctions beyond being written by an actor or singer. These books often see massive marketing campaigns and average substantially more success than most titles published, even published traditionally.

The ways in which authors access popularity now that the digital world has collided with the literary ecosystem has changed dramatically. Prestige, however, seems desperate to recreate the same pathways that have existed as long as literary prestige itself.

An array and flow of questions on the practice of reading in the digital

These readings were all really interesting in the way they consider and focus on the commercial and marketing aspect of the subjects of critical reading. Murray highlights the audience and author relationship that needs be fostered into the creation of novels and works in today’s overly consumerist western world. This makes me wonder the extent to which authors tied to publishing full length novels and books that end up physically printed and sold in bookstores, are Would this shift mean that traditional publishing houses and means will become more redundant? What can publishing houses do to move away from this road to pure commercial redundancy? (I liked the mention in class of the minimalist book cover with the text from the book written on the cover discussed in class as this specific marketing decision ties into the shift that commercial publishing practices are doing to cater to these changes) This discussion also made me consider how more ‘authentic’ pieces of writing have shifted to digital platforms such as substack, Goodreads reviews (including ‘para-text’), platforms that are ‘open-access’ and that allow for writings that look to generate peer-read opinions and discussions rather than commercially motivated writings. (what I mean by the term ‘authentic’ is that the writing might not have a commercial motivation behind it)

neuroscience cognitive aspect of reading, the connections we make. In particular, Hayes reading made me think of the scholarly concept of ‘chrononormativity’ how society is arranged in a way to direct us towards maximum productivity. I think this idea links quite well with the concept of ‘hyperreading’ as hyperlinks and endless streams of information brought by digital media in our reading practices of these include a sense of urgency in the process. And I agree with the article in the way it argues that we no longer read ‘deeply’ in the digital media landscape, but rather inside the endless array of information (whether it is info that contradicts or links with one another).

The Digital Literary Sphere and The Death of The Author

This week’s readings put me in the mind of Roland Barthes’ “death of the author” concept, which argues that meaning does not originate in authorial intention and is instead found entirely through reader reception and interpretation. And where else could you possibly find more readerly intervention than the Internet? Murray’s account in particular extends Barthes’ implication for me through her discussion of the digital literary sphere, where authorship is increasingly mediated by social platforms (both reader review sites such as Goodreads and the development of algorithmic systems which tailor what you watch and read according to your so-called ‘preferences’). I confess that I count myself guilty of reading a book or watching a film largely for the satisfaction of either singing its praises or tearing it to shreds in online reviews – an exercise that might solely achieve me a like from one of my three Goodreads followers (and only then if it’s a book they’ve actually heard of before).

But it is in this way that Murray proves how the contemporary author functions less as a sovereign source of meaning than as a performative and marketable identity which is shaped by social media visibility. I like her discussion of what Jodi Dean refers to as “communicative capitalism”, because it implies that not only does the author lose their literary identity by maintaining a public, online persona but it also implicates the reader whose “participation” in offering criticism, reviews and interpretations often benefit big corporations such as Amazon. It allows readers to feel empowered by seeing themselves as the ultimate arbiter of meaning in a text, which leaves the author effectively “dead” to their own work and simultaneously benefits corporations who can extract value from the readers unpaid work without them even being aware of doing so.

The idea of authorship operating as an institutional construct rather than the natural origin of textual meaning also put me in the mind of the Hayles article, which similarly destabilises the author by shifting attention away from the writer and towards the way we read texts, arguing that textual meaning emerges through practices of close reading, hyper reading and machine reading. At the same time, these readings expose a tension between humanistic values of interpretation and subjectivity, as I understand them through Drucker, and the logic of digital platforms that increasingly govern literary circulation (where ‘worth’ is increasingly determined by metrics and popularity rather than critical interpretation). And this online popularity contest has, ironically, the ability to ‘go-offline’. If you walk into a real-life bookstore, you will see rows and rows dedicated to ‘Book-Tok’ favourites. And as a bookshop enthusiast myself, I can attest that as much as I enjoyed The Song of Achilles five years ago when I first saw it on a ‘Book-Tok’ shelf, it would be nice to switch things up a little. The real risk here is reducing both authorship and reading to quantifiable forms of engagement, as it raises the question of what becomes of meaning, value and critique when interpretation is subsumed by an economy driven by platforms.

Reflection on Literary Value within the Digital

After reading Hayles, Wright and Murray, it became clear that the way ‘literary value’ is policed, constructed, and categorised, along with the way we read and understand these texts are undergoing a period of dramatic change. The dissolution of the virtuous, literary ‘critic’, or policing ‘publisher’, who’s academic literary knowledge form the grounding for a valuation of texts, the power of ascribing a text’s ‘value’ seems to be shifting to the consumer. With the rapid rise of texts (across various media entities) available, and lower barriers to entry for ammeter authors, what makes an ‘author’ successful, or valued, is perhaps linked to both capitalist structures (which, perhaps, drive both publishers to value certain texts above others) and cultural pallets (which are now formed by the public, not ‘high-brow’ artists). It reminded me of the perceived ‘death’ of broadcast TV, which simulated this disintegration of the coherent, cultural palate which came hand in hand with the Netflixicafion of media diets. The consumer curates their digital diet, no longer policed by broadcasters. Is this a force for good?

Literary ‘lists’ and prizes are an attempt to separate the ‘professional’ from the ‘amateur’… which books are ‘good’, or worth reading, and those which aren’t. However, even so, with the rising density of published works, and unwavering power of conglomerates (google, amazon) these are, maybe, equally unsafe from changing consumer pallets and practices. Further points to think about (which I couldn’t include):

  • Amazon/ Google recommendation systems shaping consumer tastes, by ‘recommending’ books based on algorithmic taste- does this ‘lock’ people into boxes, preventing cross-disciplinary interaction?
  • How does Faucault’s ‘author function’ apply here? When does someone become an ‘author’ in the digital sphere?
  • How might Hayles’ discussion of  ‘hyperreading’ bear on the way we read texts? Does this trickle down to affect the ways texts are produced, or published (given the consumer impact on literary value)?
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