Ai in Publishing (and the wider creative industries)
In news that surprises no one: I love AI. I’ve been speaking about the immersive web and connectivity for a few years now and how it might interact with the publishing industry and I feel like things are finally gaining steam. With that in mind, I’m very keen to do research into where AI and publishing interact, whether that’s in marketing, streamlining processes, or actually in creating content.
The performativity of authorship in a digital spaces
I’m now writing up my research into how authors perform the role of authorship in digitally social spaces. Are you an author who only talks about writing and books on Twitter because that’s where you get your work? Or do you only have personal, close friends on Facebook. Is Instagram a place where you feel like you can have real conversations with real followers?
Everything we do is based on some aspect of ritual and performativity.
And, read more in-depth about this project here.
The Cross-Platform social engagement of students
With social media being a ubiquitous part of the way students engage with each other, this study explores how media, journalism, and publishing students use social media both in and outwith the classroom. It focuses on how cohorts use social media during class times – how they are speaking to each other and scrolling social feeds – and how they communicate about course related content after class. This research highlights the obligation that some students feel to answer questions that come into the group social channels, while linking that obligation to a sense of reciprocity. It shows how these issues are embedded it in the value exchange of emotional labour and its relationship to gender. Not all students feel obligated to take part and many indicate levels of frustration at the stream of questions, which can, in turn, exacerbate negative mental health issues in students.
I’d love to hear from other academics from different universities – I’d like to do a much wider study on student social media use. Get in touch.
Books and social media: how the digital age is changing the printed word
In short this study was really interesting and you can read all about in my book. Books and Social Media: How the Digital Age is Shaping the Printed Word. But, for those of you who aren’t going to buy the book, here are the key findings. And, if you want to know more about them, you can read the excerpt in LOGOS.
- Social media are altering the way a book is defined by making its content social
- Publishers are gaining access to the spaces where citizen authors are writing and sharing work
- A citizen author chooses their own communities
- Gender plays an important role in the reading and writing communities online
- Communities of readers and writers in online spaces both embrace and exploit the authors of subculture genres
- The communities online are beginning to echo the hierarchy of the traditional publishing industry
- There has been a change in the power dynamic between the publishing industry and the writers and readers who choose to forgo the traditional route of publication
You can read more about the book here.
Runaway Rhythm
As English language poetry has evolved over time, it has employed a variety of verse forms and styles including the villanelles, sestinas, sonnets, elegies, open verse, and spoken word. Though the styles and uses of language alter as the literary periods progress through into contemporary times, many rhythms remain the same.
In various forms of rhythmic poetry, poets write a line, or lines, that can propel the reader forwards past line ends without immediately allowing a place for them to pause and absorb the meaning. These lines tend to rush until they encounter a concrete pause, usually indicated by hard, grammatical markers or syntactical means, where the reader then feels the need to pause and reconsider the significance of the lines, and often reread them for sense. It can be a localised rhythm, formed by nuances of grammar and syntax and used by the poet to create a minute separation within the movement and sense of the poem. This rhythm can be perpetuated by a variety of poetic mechanisms including enjambment, indentation, progressive verbs, and rhyming schemes. There are other, more particular stimuli relating to metrical scansion that lend themselves to generating this rhythm, such as: the use of trisyllabic feet, prryhics, trochees, dactyls, and the reading of the poem itself. The aforementioned elements can work together to create a rhythm that moves forwards, taking the reader with it, often only allowing the reader to get the general sense of the tone before the rhythm ushers them[1] to the next line. Upon reaching a concrete pause, the reader can stop and re-read the previous lines for their contents and the sense that the rhythm divorces from the movement. I will be referring to the aforementioned rhythm as ‘runaway rhythm.’
The term ‘runaway rhythm’ came about due to my interest in rap music and the relationship between written rap lyrics and the way those written lyrics influence the reader’s pace, and consequently their understanding of the content of the lines. This rhythmic mode first became apparent to me in hearing and reading rapper Eminem’s song ‘”Lose Yourself”, which features heavy enjambment and complicated rhyme schemes that propel the reader onwards in a flow that “emphasize[s] the speed of the track, making the beat seem faster than it actually is” (Bradley 45). By rhythmically encouraging me to rush from line to line, I was able to garner a sense of emotion and urgency in the lyrics, but was left feeling out of breath, uncertain about the content and significance of the lines, and needing to re-read them in order to understand the content.
Poets often use runaway rhythm to pull the reader into the experience of the poem itself and draw attention to the content by embodying it within the rhythm, as in Adam York’s “Hush”, where the wind in the poem and the runaway rhythm play off one another to create a swift, blowing sensation within the lines. In Book of Rhymes: The Poetics of Hip-Hop, Adam Bradley states that “Poetic rhythm […] is the natural pattern of speech in relation to a given meter” (8). Runaway rhythm is a means of altering standard poetic (speech) rhythms to a rhythm in which the poet can exercise influence over the reader’s understanding of the poem through playing with the divide between the lines’ movement and sense. This is not to say that all poets and all poetry make use of runaway rhythm. In fact, very few poets write it into every poem and far fewer poems consist entirely of runaway rhythm, but most poets do utilise certain elements of this rhythm occasionally within their body of their work.
The idea of Runaway Rhythm still fascinates me and I’d like to come back to it and give it my full attention in the future. You can read a better summary of it in New Ideas In the Writing Arts, 2013.
Or, should you be interested in the whole she-bang, you can view the thesis from Edinburgh University.
[1] I use ‘the reader’ to indicate a singular person reading the work, since the way a reader perceives the work and hears the rhythm is, to some degree, a singular thing. But, when referring back to ‘the reader’ instead of saying ‘his/her’, ‘he/she/it’, or choosing pronouns which assume the sex of ‘the reader’ I have chosen to write ‘they/their’.