DISTRIBUCIJA KRITIČKOG AUTORITETA – VREDNOVANJE KNJIŽEVNIH DJELA NA DRUŠTVENIM MREŽAMA
DISTRIBUTION OF CRITICAL AUTHORITY – EVALUATION OF LITERATURE ON SOCIAL MEDIA

Summary/Abstract: The paper examines the evaluation of literary works on social media in relation to the formation of literary criticism and the literary market, as well as the characteristics of the post-transitional Croatian literary field shaped by the post-socialist social, political, economic, and cultural transitions. Due to the resulting changes in evaluative roles, the analysis of contemporary evaluators also includes non-professional readers, who use new media as platform for writing reviews of literary works. Research by Simone Murray and Beth Driscoll indicates that global trends are mirrored in the Croatian literary field – the contemporary Croatian digital sphere is likewise marked by a democratization of evaluation and a distribution of critical authority. New evaluators, active recreational readers, freely express their views and impressions of literary works and are oriented toward communication and building relationships with their reader-followers. This is confirmed by an analysis of responses from literary bloggers who participated in the study on evaluation mechanisms, which reveals that their priority in writing about literary works is not one-way value assessment, but communication with their audience. By insisting on communication and affirmative reflections on the literary titles that left the strongest impression on them, as well as on the freedom to select parts of the text without considering a literary work or literary production as a whole, literary bloggers generally do not aspire to fill the gap created by the restructuring of the literary field and the significant reduction in the number of active literary critics. Analysis also shows avoidance of judgement as characteristic of non-professional evaluators (Felski 2020: 134) and the need for revitalisation of the role of professional literary critics in the contemporary Croatian literary field through proactive cultural policies and by securing platforms for their activity.

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