Bibliophiles : Amateur Reviews in a Media Compact Society

Abstract: Bourdieu once spoke of ‘autonomy’ as a cornerstone to the making of a field, an element that demands the creation of contextually tied social values and hierarchies. Within the literary field, these hierarchical structures have been embedded for a long time, ranking cultural producers and other industry-leading agents above the social and the common; the ordinary reader. But what happens when boundaries between the ‘professional’ and the ‘amateur’ become increasingly complex and blurred? In contemporary societies, it is possible to observe how ordinary readers become literary critics in various online settings. On Facebook, amateur reviewers can be spotted in different book groups; groups that the book industry use as marketing arenas and increasingly treat as a recognized agent in the field of cultural production. This indicates that the constant transformation of media and the emergence of new has an impact on the literary field. By investigating the social dynamic within the Swedish group ‘Bibliophiles’ on Facebook, this case study aims to make sense of a ‘social media logic’ in consumer reviews on Facebook, and in extension, understand to what extent digital communities have the capability of destabilising pre-existing frames of social and cultural hierarchies. This is done through qualitative text analysis on posts within the group that discuss the Nobel prize laureate Abdulrazak Gurnah. In this way, the thesis sheds light on how ordinary people relate to ‘fine culture’ and their view on their position in the contemporary literary field. The findings indicate that there is a collective force in amateur reviews, where a mirroring and reverberating social dynamic create a contextually tied social media logic. The reverberating behaviour is not only emotionally important for the sense of community, but it is also necessary and needed in order to challenge established and pre-existing values. The findings also demonstrate that the collective force has the capacity to create its own quality markers of literature, showcasing that the group, to a certain extent, has gained autonomy within the literary field. In all of this, social media logic is important and shows that amateur reviews online have the capacity to destabilise rooted social and cultural frameworks.