Readers, there's a lesbian in my book! : An exploration of the lesbianliterature mediating possibilitiesof BookTube

Abstract: In this thesis I look at five YouTube videos recommending lesbian literature within the YouTube sub community known as BookTube, with the purpose of exploring how BookTube creators mediate lesbian literature and stimulate a reading desire among lesbian readers through their recommendation videos. Using a deductive content analysis, I analysed the BookTube videos to gain an understanding of why and how the video creators recommend lesbian literature to their viewers. This was then followed by a thematic analysis of each respective videos commentsection, to explore the responses left by the commenters and understand what they gained out of the videos and how it has affected their desire to read, using the literature stimulating theories of subjective relevance along with personal/impersonal experiential/instrumental reading. I also explored the identity strengthening opportunities regarding the lesbian literature and community offered through BookTube. The theory of Compulsory Heterosexuality and the Lesbian Continuum have been used when discussing the lesbian angle of this thesis and connects to the reading stimulation through subjective relevance. The last theory used when analysing the comments of the video is the digital closet, which refers to when people use the selective anonymity of the internet to determine how much of their sexual identity they share.The study found that lesbian literature had a positive effect on the identity building of both the people making the video as well as on the commenters commenting on the video. The videos also had a literature stimulating effect on the commenters, with many commenters reporting they put the recommended books on their own to-be-read list, or recommending more books to the video creator and other commenters. Furthermore, the anonymity of the internet appears to give commenters who are not out with their sexual identity in real life the security to come out to the other people within the lesbian BookTube community.