"If this is your idea of a romance book like girl, you need standards" : Intermediation of literature within literary fiction reviews on BookTok

Through an interpretive approach this master’s thesis aims to understand BookTokers as intermediators of literature by studying BookTokers’ approach to literary aspects and their way of expressing opinions about good, bad and quality literature. Furthermore, the aim is to provide possible explanations as to why BookTokers’ approach to literature and their way of expressing their opinions exists in the current way. The empirically collected data consists of 76 non-fiction literary review videos collected from TikTok and has been analysed using an inductive thematic analysis. The theories used were McRobbie and Garber’s bedroom culture and a continuation of Mulvey’s theory the male gaze called the female gaze. Bourdieu’s theoretical concepts social field, taste and varieties of capital have been used, as well as Goffman’s concept about regions and lastly front. Together they have been used to form a model of explanation that merges the physical room, the digital space and the fluidity of norms and how they interact. The results show that BookTokers refer to many different literary aspects when defining if a book is good or bad, including what emotions the book evoked within the reader, the characters, the author’s writing technique and the story. I argue that BookTokers’ approach to quality literature is implicit and based on historical, moral debates about reading and literature and an understanding of how professional literary critics relate to the concept of quality. BookTokers’ way of expressing their opinion is primarily based upon exaggerated emotionally anchored expressions and the use of humour. The main conclusion shows that content creators on BookTok are affected by feminine norms; which both influence their approach and expression. BookTokers also strive to be viewed as authentic and to gain recognition for their knowledge about qualitative literature and their experience as readers. This is a two years master’s thesis in Library and Information Science.