ABSTRACT
This chapter addresses issues arising from the curation of literary content found on social media and the extent to which works may emerge which require the preservation and/or close critical attention associated with canonisation. It outlines some of the tools and methods developed within the field of digital humanities to provide ‘big data’ analyses of cultural trends and shifts, as well as for archiving and preserving digital content. The chapter demonstrates how social media’s return to the ‘aesthetic of bookishness’ can be seen as a response to the seeming dematerialisation of reading on digital devices, as well as a means for users to assert their readerly identities and to engage and play with books and book-related objects. Pinder is interested in the ways in which the site allows for the display of a kind of ‘performative consumption’ which carries with it the intellectual, aesthetic and moral values he argues are imputed specifically to books and to literature.
