Category: Posts and Updates

“So much for literary democracy”: Journalistic Capital and the The Influence and Reception of Scandal Surrounding Literary Prizes on Social Media

Literary prizes, increasingly topic of research (e.g Moser 2004, English 2009, Leinen 2010, Ducas 2013, Röhricht 2016, Sapiro 2016, Auguscik 2017, Childress et al. 2017, Kennedy-Karpat and Sandberg 2017, Rahmann 2017, Mosely 2019), function as traditional literary gatekeepers and are responsible for the institutionalised consecration of literary texts. Contemplating Bourdieu’s field of cultural production (1983) literary prizes are frequently discussed in terms of economic and symbolic capital, but they can also bestow visibility. James English thus proposes journalistic capital, which may accelerate the accumulation of symbolic capital (2002, p. 115) and represents “the marketability of the award and its winners” (Squires 2013, p. 293).

Scandal is hardly unusual (English 2002, p. 113), though valuable, established and prestigious prizes (e.g. Booker Prize) are generally able to weather public opinion. But what challenge does bad publicity pose for a prize which relies almost exclusively on journalistic capital? As a case study, I shall examine the 2012 edition of the Not The Booker Prize (NTBP), when the behaviour and back-room negotiations of a contender scandalised organisers and audience alike. The NTBP was created by left-wing The Guardian in 2009 as a democratic literary counter-prize. Officially, winners receive nothing but a “Guardian”-mug. Although relatively low in both symbolic and economic capital, because the newspaper is able to use its own platform, the prize generates a lot of media attention and therefore predominantly awards journalistic capital. Besides nominating and voting in the newspaper’s comment section, the audience also discusses the prize on Twitter. Within this context, I aim to study the figure of the layperson critic as an additional literary gatekeeper on social media platforms. For this, I will analyse the tweets created in the immediate wake of the scandal to gain insight into the content of the user-generated literary criticism.

 

Bibliography:

Auguscik, Anna. Prizing Debate: The Fourth Decade of the Booker Prize and the Contemporary Novel in the UK. Transcript, 2017.

Bourdieu, Pierre. ‘The Field of Cultural Production, or: The Economic World Reversed’. Poetics, vol. 12, no. 4, 1983, pp. 311–56.

Childress, Clayton, et al. “Publishers, Authors, and Texts: The Process of Cultural Consecration in Prize Evaluation.” Poetics, vol. 60, Feb. 2017, pp. 48–61.

Ducas, Sylvie. La littérature à quel(s) prix? Histoire des prix littéraires. La Découverte, 2013.

English, James F. “Winning the Culture Game: Prizes, Awards, and the Rules of Art.” New Literary History, vol. 33, no. 1, Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002, pp. 109–135.

English, James F. The Economy of Prestige: Prizes, Awards, and the Circulation of Cultural Value. Harvard University Press, 2009.

Kennedy-Karpat, Colleen, and Eric Sandberg. Adaptation, Awards Culture, and the Value of Prestige. Springer Berlin Heidelberg, 2017.

Leinen, Angela. Wie man den Bachmannpreis gewinnt. Gebrauchsanweisung zum Lesen und Schreiben. Heyne, 2010.

Moseley, Merritt. ‘How the Booker Prize Won the Prize’. American, British and Canadian Studies, vol. 33, Dec. 2019, pp. 206–21.

Moser, Doris. Der Ingeborg-Bachmann-Preis. Börse, Show, Event. Böhlau Verlag, 2004.

Pickford, Susan. “The Booker Prize and the Prix Goncourt. A Case Study of Award-Winning Novels in Translation.” Book History, vol. 14, 2011, pp. 221–240.

Rahmann, Kathrin. Von der Wirkung zur Wertung. Formal-ästhetische Werte in den Diskussionen des Ingeborg-Bachmann-Wettbewerbs 1999-2009. 2017. Georg-August-Universität Göttingen, PhD dissertation.

Röhricht, Karin. Wettlesen um den Ingeborg-Bachmann-Preis. Korpusanalyse der Anthologie Klagenfurter Texte (1977-2011). Studienverlag, 2016.

Sapiro, Gisèle. “The Metamorphosis of Modes of Consecration in the Literary Field: Academies, Literary Prizes, Festivals.” Poetics, vol. 59, Dec. 2016, pp. 5–19.

Squires, Claire. ‘Literary Prizes and Awards’. A Companion to Creative Writing, edited by Graeme Harper, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, 2013, pp. 291–303.

Large Language Models in the Humanities: magic shortcut or just beating about the bots? #nocode #alldata

Following up on our earlier contributions on doing Aspect-Category-Opinion-Sentiment Quadruple Extraction, in this talk, we aim to weigh some of the tried and trusted methods of doing NLP against the new kid on the block, namely LLM (Large Language Models) trained for various purposes and languages. Few-shot and zero-shot approaches may seem adventurous, and they indeed may not live up to the state-of-the-art achieved with regard to our specific use-case, i.e. aspect-based sentiment analyses (ABSA) in specific domains such as laptops and restaurants. But what if e.g. your target vocabulary is out of domain (OOD) by principle? What if your data is largely unstructured full-text? Compared to the time-consuming task of generating annotations, using GPT-3 turns out to yield surprisingly good results for a variety of tasks like NER and ABSA. We will show how to “escape” the chatbox and feed data in bulk to the model. We aim to discuss whether this is a viable solution, especially for the aspiring DH researcher with limited programming skills, limited GPU access, and/or without persistent support from teams dedicated to humanities-style qualitative research questions. We will present some of the tasks that have become possible over the course of conducting our study of multilingual sentiment in a specific multimodal setting, such as: automatic transcription of oral sources, alignment of oral and written data, speaker diarization, automatic generation of training data with annotations, etc. We will illustrate the major advantages of API-based solutions for classification, such as the small amount of training data needed to fine-tune the model, and the ease of access. All in all, this type of modular pipeline is a less prohibitive pathway for aspiring researchers, compared to setting up a demanding and complicated environment that is typically required in traditional NLP methods. In addition, allowing people to “chat with your data” will inevitably become a new way of disseminating research results in a non-directive way, also in domains where access to the actual artefacts might be marred by copyright. This workshop is not about presenting results or final conclusions, but aims to provide an opportunity to discuss what some consider to be a watershed moment, while others remain sceptical.

For more information on the symposium and the participants, please consult the symposium website.

Abstract: “Scandal sells books”: An Analysis of the Reception and Perception of Scandals Surrounding Literary Prizes on Social Media

Due to their role as traditional gatekeepers in the field of literary criticism, literary prizes are responsible for the institutionalised consecration of literary texts. They are increasingly topic of research (e.g Moser 2004, English 2005, Leinen 2010, Ducas 2013, Röhricht 2016, Sapiro 2016, Auguscik 2017, Childress et al. 2017, Kennedy-Karpat and Sandberg 2017, Rahmann 2017). The general discourse surrounding prizes, however, tends to be negative (cf. English 2005, p. 187) and they are frequently subject of scandals. Nevertheless, scandal is “the instrument par excellence of symbolic action” (Bourdieu p. 84) and English argues that “scandal […] is constitutive of prizes” (English 2002, p. 113). Scandal is consequently inherent to literary prizes.

In this presentation, I shall examine two scandals surrounding the Booker Prize and the Not the Booker Prize, respectively. The Booker Prize is no stranger to scandal, in fact its success relies on it (English 2002, p. 113) and Drabble states that the prize “has failed in its task of stimulating public interest” if it is not subjected to “bitter controversy and scandal” (p. 250). The case study in question is the 2013 scandal concerning the expanded nomination criteria, which allow any novel written in English and published in the UK or Ireland to qualify. Although its counter-prize is hardly as well-known and despite its goal to challenge the Booker Prize’s obscure nomination and judging practices, the Not the Booker has also known controversy. I shall take a closer look at the 2012 edition and the scandal pertaining to Ewan Morrison’s leaked e-mail, in which he lied about the competition and criticized the voting system, his refusal to withdraw, as well as the reactions of the organisers. Within this context, I thus aim to study the emerging and evolving figure of the layperson critic as an additional literary gatekeeper on social media platforms. For this, I will analyse the tweets that were created in the immediate wake of these scandals in order to gain insight into the content of the user-generated literary criticism created by new layperson gatekeepers regarding traditional gatekeepers.

Bibliography:

Auguscik, Anna. Prizing Debate: The Fourth Decade of the Booker Prize and the Contemporary Novel in the UK. Transcript, 2017.

Bourdieu, Pierre, and Hans Haacke. Free Exchange. Polity Press, 1995.

Childress, Clayton, et al. “Publishers, Authors, and Texts: The Process of Cultural Consecration in Prize Evaluation.” Poetics, vol. 60, Feb. 2017, pp. 48–61.

Drabble, Margaret. “Pleasure and Prestige. A Writer Reflects on the Prize System.” British Book News, April 1989, pp. 250-251.

Ducas, Sylvie. La littérature à quel(s) prix? Histoire des prix littéraires. La Découverte, 2013.

English, James F. “Winning the Culture Game: Prizes, Awards, and the Rules of Art.” New Literary History, vol. 33, no. 1, Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002, pp. 109–135.

English, James F. The Economy of Prestige: Prizes, Awards, and the Circulation of Cultural Value. Harvard University Press, 2009.

Kennedy-Karpat, Colleen, and Eric Sandberg. Adaptation, Awards Culture, and the Value of Prestige. Springer Berlin Heidelberg, 2017.

Leinen, Angela. Wie man den Bachmannpreis gewinnt. Gebrauchsanweisung zum Lesen und Schreiben. Heyne, 2010.

Moser, Doris. Der Ingeborg-Bachmann-Preis. Börse, Show, Event. Böhlau Verlag, 2004.

Pickford, Susan. “The Booker Prize and the Prix Goncourt. A Case Study of Award-Winning Novels in Translation.” Book History, vol. 14, 2011, pp. 221–240.

Rahmann, Kathrin. Von der Wirkung zur Wertung. Formal-ästhetische Werte in den Diskussionen des Ingeborg-Bachmann-Wettbewerbs 1999-2009. 2017. Georg-August-Universität Göttingen, PhD dissertation.

Röhricht, Karin. Wettlesen um den Ingeborg-Bachmann-Preis. Korpusanalyse der Anthologie Klagenfurter Texte (1977-2011). Studienverlag, 2016.

Sapiro, Gisèle. “The Metamorphosis of Modes of Consecration in the Literary Field: Academies, Literary Prizes, Festivals.” Poetics, vol. 59, Dec. 2016, pp. 5–19.

Abstract: Prof. Dr. Gunther Martens/Lore De Greve (Gent)

„Bisschen Josef Winkler, bisschen Ted Liu, bisschen Asimov“: Ein sentimentanalytischer Vergleich zwischen der Jury- und Laienkritik zum Ingeborg-Bachmann-Preis

Im Rahmen unseres vom FWO-Flandern finanzierten Forschungsprojektes „Evaluation of literature by professional and layperson critics: A digital and literary sociological analysis of evaluative talk of literature through the prism of literary prizes (2007-2017)“ versuchen wir, anhand einer digitalen und literatursoziologischen Analyse die Bewertung der Literatur von professionellen KritikerInnen und von sogenannten social oder small critics zu vergleichen. Das konkrete Vorgehen möchten wir am Beispiel der online Twitter-Diskussion zum Ingeborg-Bachmann-Preis (2007-2019) illustrieren. Wir werden die Bewertungskriterien, die in diesen Tweets zum Ausdruck kommen, mithilfe einer detaillierten Aspect-based Sentiment Analysis identifizieren. Diese Methode ermöglicht uns, festzustellen, welche Meinungen über einen bestimmten ‚Aspekt‘ oder ein bestimmtes Thema geäußert werden, z.B. über die Motive im Text, den Autor, die Lesung, die Jurymitglieder, den Preis selbst usw. Da sich inzwischen jährlich mehr als 1000 TeilnehmerInnen an dieser Online-Debatte beteiligen, werten wir das Korpus anhand von Annotation und Text Mining (semi)automatisch aus. Projektseite: http://www.talklitmining.ugent.be.

Literary Prizes in times of #Twitterature and #Bookstagram: A Digital and Literary Sociological Analysis of the Layperson Evaluative “Talk of Literature” Regarding Literary Prizes on Social Media

The French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu (1993) argued that a text’s literary status as symbolic capital depends on the recognition by authorised institutions or individuals. Research on the field of literary criticism has often focused on this institutionalised consecration of literary texts, concerning traditional gatekeepers, such as prizes (English 2009, Sapiro 2016), or on professional critics’ threatened position of authority (Löffler 2017, Schneider 2018; Kempke/Vöcklinghaus/Zeh 2019, Chong 2020). Nevertheless, comparatively little research (Kellermann/Mehling/Rehfeldt 2016; Kellermann/Mehling 2017; Bogaert 2017) has actually attempted to directly ingest and mine the content of user-generated literary criticism shared on social media platforms, such as Instagram and Twitter. Consequently, relatively little attention has been paid to the role of Twitterers and Instagrammers as new literary gatekeepers and cultural transmitters.

In this presentation, I aim to analyse lay critics’ evaluative “talk of literature” on Twitter and Instagram, two social media platforms with a distinct focus and “book communities”. For this, I will examine the tweets and Instagram-posts surrounding three prominent literary prizes from different language communities, namely the Dutch-language Fintro Literatuurprijs, the German-language Ingeborg-Bachmann-Preis and the English-language Booker Prize, each supporting a different level of transparency[1] and audience participation. I intend to map the various evaluative criteria used by lay critics and to provide an answer to the question on which aspects of the prize itself and/or of the nominated and/or awarded titles – e.g. the jury discussion, a book’s plot or language use… – the lay “audience” concentrates and how these aspects are subsequently evaluated by them. By examining the online discussions and performing an aspect-based sentiment analysis (ABSA) this data will enable me to trace shifts in the prizes’ coverage on these social media platforms. I posit that the layperson critic’s criteria and evaluation of the prizes and nominated or awarded titles is influenced by each prize’s level of audience participation and transparency and the social medium itself.

Bibliography:

Bogaert, Xiana. ‘ICH WÜRDE AM LIEBSTEN MIT DER JURY DISKUTIEREN! #TDDL‘. Der Ingeborg-Bachmann-Preis: ein Vergleich zwischen der Jury- und Laienkritik auf Twitter. University of Ghent, unpublished thesis, 2017.
Bourdieu, Pierre. The Field of Cultural Production: Essays on Art and Literature. Polity Press/Blackwell Publishers, 1993.
Chong, Phillipa K. Inside the Critics’ Circle. Book Reviewing in Uncertain Times. Princeton University Press, 2020.
English, James F. The Economy of Prestige: Prizes, Awards, and the Circulation of Cultural Value. Harvard University Press, 2009.
Kellermann, Holger, and Gabriele Mehling. „Laienrezensionen auf amazon.de im Spannungsfeld zwischen Alltagskommunikation und professioneller Literaturkritik”. Die Rezension. Aktuelle Tendenzen der Literaturkritik, edited by Andrea Bartl and Markus Behmer, Königshausen & Neumann, 2017, pp. 173–202.
Kellermann, Holger, Gabriele Mehling and Martin Rehfeldt. „Wie bewerten Laienrezensenten? Ausgewählte Ergebnisse einer inhaltsanalytischen Studie”. Was wir lesen sollen: Kanon und literarische Wertung am Beginn des 21. Jahrhunderts, edited by Stefan Neuhaus and Uta Schaffers, Königshausen & Neumann, 2016, pp. 229–238.
Kempke, Kevin, Lena Vöcklinghaus and Miriam Zeh. Institutsprosa: Literaturwissenschaftliche Perspektiven auf akademischen Schreibschulen. Spector Books, 2019.
Sapiro, Gisèle. “The Metamorphosis of Modes of Consecration in the Literary Field: Academies, Literary Prizes, Festivals.” Poetics, vol. 59, Dec. 2016, pp. 5–19.
Schneider, Ute. „Bücher zeigen und Leseatmosphären inszenieren – vom Habitus enthusiastischer Leserinnen und Leser.” Gelesene Literatur: Populäre Lektüre im Zeichen des Medienwandels, edited by Steffen Martus and Carlos Spoerhase, edition text + kritik 2018, pp. 113-123.
Löffler, Sigrid. „Danke, kein Bedarf? Wie die totgesagte Literaturkritik ihr Ableben überleben kann.“ Stimmen der Zeit. – Freiburg, Br. : Herder, vol. 235, no. 12, 2017, pp. 805–814.