Tastemaking in Post-digital Literary Culture: The Role of Book Blogs

Presented by Dr Beth Driscoll (University of Melbourne)

Date: Friday 31 August, 2018
Time: 3:00pm-4:00pm
Location: Digital Learning Space (Room 224, Level 2), Joyce Ackroyd Building (#37) 

Abstract:

Amidst the plethora of opportunities for book chat provided by digital media platforms, the book blog is distinctive: less obviously corporatised than Amazon, Facebook or Twitter, longer in format, and focused around the tastes of an individual and the community of like-minded readers they might attract. This presentation considers book blogs as shared expressions of readers' aesthetic conduct across print and digital formats, connected to the publishing industry (including through self-publishing) while also aligned with recreation and pleasure. To tease out some of the distinctions within book blogging, I describe two contrasting networks: highbrow literary blogs, and romance fiction blogs. While new media enables increased participation of readers in book culture, this participation is stratified into taste-based groups, which are themselves further stratified by hierarchy as bloggers accumulate a specific kind of ‘readerly capital’.

 

Presenter:

Beth Driscoll is Senior Lecturer in Publishing and Communications and Program Coordinator for the Master of Arts and Cultural Management at the University of Melbourne. Her research investigates contemporary cultures of reading, publishing and writing. Her monograph, "The New Literary Middlebrow: Tastemakers and Reading in the Twenty-First Century" (Palgrave Macmillan), was published in 2014 and is based on her doctoral research into contemporary forms of middlebrow literary culture including Oprah's Book Club, the Man Booker Prize and literary festivals. 

Beth is a Chief Investigator on two ARC Discovery Projects. "Genre Worlds: Australian Popular Fiction in the Twenty-First Century" (with Dr Kim Wilkins and Prof David Carter, UQ, and Dr Lisa Fletcher, UTas) runs from 2016 to 2018 and will offer the first systematic examination of 21st-century Australian popular fiction, the most significant growth area in Australian trade publishing since the turn of the century. Its three areas of investigation are: the publishing of Australian popular fiction; the interrelationships between Australian popular fiction and Australian genre communities; and the textual distinctiveness of Australian popular novels in relation to genre. Research will centre on thirty novels across three genres, building a comprehensive picture of the practices and processes of Australian popular fiction through detailed examination of trade data, close reading of texts, and interviews with industry figures.

"New Tastemakers and Australia's Post-Digital Literary Culture" (with A/Prof Mark Davis and Dr Sybil Nolan, University of Melbourne, and Dr Emmett Stinson, Deakin University) runs from 2017-2019. It investigates the effect of digital technologies on taste-making in Australian literary culture. The project will examine how digital media and platforms such as eBooks, Twitter, Goodreads and Amazon reviews have changed how Australian literature is produced, distributed and consumed, and what this means for the future of Australian literature.  

Dr Beth Driscoll

 

About Research Seminar and Workshop Series

 


School of Communication and Arts Research Seminar Series

The research seminar and workshop series occur each semester, each with a different topic and guest speaker from UQ or otherwise.

Friday, 4 August
12-1pm

Hybrid: Online via Zoom and in person at the
SCA Writer's Studio
(Level 6, Michie)

After the Future: Heat, Collapse, and Exhausting the “Future of Work”

Dr Luke Munn

Friday, 25 August
12-1pm

Hybrid: Online via Zoom and in person at the
SCA Writer's Studio
(Level 6, Michie)

Promoting children’s environmental responsibility in the EFL classroomDr Valentina Adami

Friday, 1 September
12-1pm

Hybrid: Online via Zoom and in person at the
SCA Writer's Studio
(Level 6, Michie)

Write FOR your reader vs. writing WITH your reader: human-centred design in professional communication

and

Portraying Asian-diasporic identity beyond the limits of the literary label Asian-Australian

Catriona Arthy

and

Olivia De Zilva

Friday, 8 September
12-1pm

Hybrid: Online via Zoom and in person at the
SCA Writer's Studio
(Level 6, Michie)

Exploring Digital Humanities through the Lens of Journalism: A Case Study of Reader Comment Analysis

Dr Lujain Shafeeq

Friday, 15 September
12-1pm

Hybrid: Online via Zoom and in person at the
SCA Writer's Studio
(Level 6, Michie)

The Medicalised Body - On Illness, Humour, and Sexuality

and

Talkin about the thing that stops me writing about the thing Im talkin about: Hacking and Hofstadter on the looping effect of diagnostic labels and writing the strange double

Carly-Jay Metcalfe and Bianca Millroy

Friday, 22 September
12-1pm

Hybrid: Online via Zoom and in person at the
SCA Writer's Studio
(Level 6, Michie)

Coping with eco-anxiety: A guided journal trialDr Ans Vercammen and Dr Skye Doherty

 

Venue

Digital Learning Space (Room 224, Level 2), Joyce Ackroyd Building (#37)