ABSTRACT
Introduction The aim of this chapter is to analyse the changing face of literary culture as new opportunities for publishing and literary communication are opened up by the internet and particularly by Web 2.0 and the associated principles of ‘participative culture’. Hence, it is the author’s intention to verify the hypothesis that the advent of open publication platforms (blogs, discussion forums with literary content, websites for writing communities, social networks and the like) has started to change the social status and social function of literature and its creators – literature is beginning to be presented and perceived as the product of leisure activity with primarily a relaxational and auto-therapeutic function. This objective will be achieved by analysing the structure and communicative practice of amateur literary forums which make up a substantial proportion of the content on the Czech literary internet, and are found in a number of other national literatures.
