TY - GEN
T1 - Patterns of Quality
T2 - 2024 Computational Humanities Research Conference, CHR 2024
AU - Jacobsen, Mia
AU - Bizzoni, Yuri
AU - Moreira, Pascale Feldkamp
AU - Nielbo, Kristoffer L.
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2024 Copyright for this paper by its authors.
PY - 2024
Y1 - 2024
N2 - Recent work on the textual features linked to literary quality has primarily focused on commercially published literature, such as canonical or best-selling novels, that are systematically filtered by editorial and market mechanisms. However, the biggest repositories of fiction texts currently in existence are free fanfiction websites, where fans post fictional stories about their favorite characters for the pleasure of writing and engaging with others. This makes them a particularly interesting domain to study the patterns of perceived quality “in the wild”, where text-reader relations are less filtered. Moreover, since fanfiction is a community-built domain with its own conventions, comparing it to published literature can more generally provide insights into the reception and perceived quality of published literature itself. Taking a novel approach to the study of fanfiction, we observe whether three textual features associated with perceived literary quality in published texts are also relevant in the context of fanfiction. Using different reception proxies, we find that despite the differences of fanfiction from published literature, some “patterns of quality” associated with positive reception appear to hold similar effects in both of these contexts of literary production.
AB - Recent work on the textual features linked to literary quality has primarily focused on commercially published literature, such as canonical or best-selling novels, that are systematically filtered by editorial and market mechanisms. However, the biggest repositories of fiction texts currently in existence are free fanfiction websites, where fans post fictional stories about their favorite characters for the pleasure of writing and engaging with others. This makes them a particularly interesting domain to study the patterns of perceived quality “in the wild”, where text-reader relations are less filtered. Moreover, since fanfiction is a community-built domain with its own conventions, comparing it to published literature can more generally provide insights into the reception and perceived quality of published literature itself. Taking a novel approach to the study of fanfiction, we observe whether three textual features associated with perceived literary quality in published texts are also relevant in the context of fanfiction. Using different reception proxies, we find that despite the differences of fanfiction from published literature, some “patterns of quality” associated with positive reception appear to hold similar effects in both of these contexts of literary production.
KW - canon
KW - fandoms
KW - fanfiction
KW - literary quality
KW - reader appreciation
UR - https://www.scopus.com/pages/publications/85210829189
M3 - Article in proceedings
AN - SCOPUS:85210829189
VL - 3834
T3 - CEUR Workshop Proceedings
SP - 718
EP - 739
BT - 2024 Computational Humanities Research Conference, CHR 2024
Y2 - 4 December 2024 through 6 December 2024
ER -