Do digitally induced transformations of the book media system establish a ‘new literature’, require a ‘new literary scholarship’? A book / media studies view

Abstract

This paper is driven by two fundamental questions: which are the major transformations that the book as a medium and the book industry as a whole are undergoing through the advent of digitalization? And in how far can the products of this new digital environment be understood as an altogether new sort of literature. If this new literature is on the rise, as this paper argues, then the analytical practices of literary studies as well as book / media studies must answer this new challenge with adequate new theories and methods.