Bookstagram, BookTok & More: Understanding the Role of Social Media in 21st-Century Reading and Recommendation Culture (WiSe 2025/26)

Veranstaltungszeitplan

Beschreibung

Social media has dramatically changed the way we read. New forms of literary exchange have formed on Instagram and TikTok, marked in particular by the hashtags #bookstagram and #booktok. This interdisciplinary seminar, conducted together with students and instructors from the German Department, will address urgent questions surrounding the role of social media in 21st-century reading and recommendation culture, and their impact on processes of reception, canonization and author/publisher/imprint/series branding. Students will encounter and discuss book and publishing studies work by Bronwen Thomas (Literature and Social Media) and Danielle Fuller & DeNel Rehberg Sedo (Reading Bestsellers) and the well-established concepts of bookishness put forward by Jessica Pressman, but also literary studies concepts, thinking about formula fiction, genre and popular forms of reading. There will be discussions of recent book success stories, looking at titles that have been boosted by BookTok in particular. Students should be prepared to read at least two (popular, contemporary) novels and scholarly as well as journalistic texts in German and English. 

Literatur

Please make sure to familiarize yourself with the Post 45 Cluster “Reading With Algorithms” (https://post45.org/sections/contemporaries-essays/reading-with-algorithms/), this is a good starting point for our conversations and activities.

Dozenten

• Ninja Schmiedgen (verantwortlich)