#Bookstagram and beyond : the presence and depiction of the Bachmann Literary Prize on social media (2007-2017)

Although there has been ample empirical and theoretical research on the ‘field(s)’ of literary criticism and its changing institutional context, few scholars (Steiner 2008, Kellermann et al. 2016; Kellermann and Mehling 2017; Bogaert 2017) have actually attempted to directly ingest and mine the actual content of user-generated online literary criticism. While there is no shortage of broad trend watching and apocalyptic doom saying (activities seemingly endemic to literary criticism itself), the actual scope and productivity of phenomena like #bookstagram and activist counter-criticism like #diekanon and #frauenzählen (#countingwomen) remain largely unknown. In this paper, We discuss the position and characteristics of the Ingeborg-Bachmann-Preis and briefly address the process of data mining and data collection. Secondly, the paper describes the evolution of the online presence of the Bachmann-Preis throughout the decade concerning its visibility and popularity on the social platforms. Finally, we then explore the actual content of the online community discourse corpora by performing a corpus analysis, examining word frequencies.

Publication year:2021

Accessibility:Open