Reading Audio Readers: Book Consumption in the Streaming Age, by Karl Berglund (Uppsala University)

The current rise of streamed audiobooks is deeply affecting our book and reading culture, in manifold ways. Drawing from the recently published book Reading Audio Readers, this talk uncovers how people make use of this medium by investigating a unique set of reader consumption data, covering 74 million logged sessions of audiobook streaming during one year on the level per user and hour. Offering an academic perspective on the kind of user data hoard we associate with tech companies, it asks: when it comes to audiobooks, what do people really read, and how and when do they read it? And how can we use proprietary user data as a tool for algorithmic criticism?

Karl Berglund is an assistant professor of literature at Uppsala University, Sweden. His research spans popular genre fiction, publishing and reading studies, and cultural analytics. He is the author of Reading Audio Readers: Book Consumption in the Streaming Age (2024). His writing has appeared in PMLA, Journal of Cultural Analytics, European Journal of Cultural Studies, and other publications.

Registration

Please register before 5 November if you would like to attend.

For more information, please contact cdh rug.nl.