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Populist Modernism: Printed Instagram Poetry and the Literary Highbrow

“InstaPoets” are a collection of individual Instagrammers who’ve converted their social media capital (hundreds of thousands of followers, millions of “likes” and reposts) into printed book bestseller status. Rupi Kaur alone tallied 1.4 million sales of her first book of Insta Poetry, Milk and Honey, in 2017. Uniquely among books by social media celebrities (c.f.books by YouTube celebrities), fans of InstaPoets buy printed book versions of exactly the same content that’s available for free in an Instagram feed. Why do these fans buy what they already have for free?

This paper describes the Instagram Poetry phenomenon, then situates it in two contexts: debates about high- and lowbrow digital literary culture; and book industry efforts to understand--and monetize--digital interactivity.

Nina Kolovic - 05.09.2018 - 15:04

This Work, ELMCIP, is licensed under a Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International license, although certain works referenced herein may be separately licensed.