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Hoyt Long

@hoytlong.bsky.social
1.5K followers 1.3K following 44 posts

Scholar of Japanese literature, media, cultural analytics. Now working on platforms, television, cultural AI. "The Values in Numbers" (2021). Offline: cooking, ceramics, watercolor. Professor at University of Chicago. hoytlong.github.io

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Hoyt Long @hoytlong.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
If you're at #COLM2026, come check out our poster for "Spoiler Alert" (arxiv.org/abs/2604.09854). We ask why LLM fiction is so bad at holding narrative tension, and create a metric to measure tension in short stories. What improves LLM fiction on this metric, it turns out, is narrative planning.
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Richard Jean So @richardjeanso.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
Prospective PhD students: if you work on computational humanities, cultural analytics and/or cultural AI, pls apply to Duke English! We're recruiting in these areas & you'd join a vibrant community. Candidates with training in both lit studies + CS/sciences esp welcome. Email me if any questions!
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Richard Jean So @richardjeanso.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
Humanistic AI conference at Duke (9/25-6), full schedule forthcoming but speaker/title list is up! We have an amazing line up - @tedunderwood.com @laurenfklein.bsky.social @mariaa.bsky.social @hoytlong.bsky.social @eduede.bsky.social + others; if in area, please come! sites.duke.edu/humanisticai...
sites.duke.edu
Speakers – Humanistic AI Conference at Duke
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Richard Jean So @richardjeanso.bsky.social · 24/08/2026
Really worthwhile CFP f/ Computational Humanities Research on "Peripheries," inviting work that uses data-driven approaches to recovering marginalized, lost voices in the cultural record/archive & what's been lost through processes of mass corpus digitization: www.cambridge.org/core/journal...
cambridge.org
Peripheries
Call for Papers: Peripheries
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Aarthi Vadde @aarthivadde.bsky.social · 30/06/2026
Happy Pub Day to We the Platform and many many thanks to my editor Philip and the Columbia UP team for supporting the book!
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Neel Gupta @neel2112.bsky.social · 24/06/2026
Preprint with @mariaa.bsky.social and @mellymeldubs.bsky.social on how real people are writing fiction with LLMs based on the Wildchat dataset here arxiv.org/abs/2606.22748.
arxiv.org
AI Fiction in the Wild
Some professional authors are beginning to use AI tools to help produce their fiction writing. Are readers using AI to generate fiction, too? Drawing on over 500,000 anonymized, English-language ChatG...
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Myra Cheng @myra.bsky.social · 23/04/2026
Patrick Sui and I are hosting an #ICLR2026 social for anyone with background/interest in the humanities! Room 210, 12-1:30pm on Friday 24 April!! Humanities-adjacent, humanities-curious, everyone is welcome! Should be a fun group! :)
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Hoyt Long @hoytlong.bsky.social · 23/04/2026
If you're at #ICLR and interested in humanities-centered work on AI (plus a radical take on the problem of LLM hallucination), Patrick Sui will be presenting our paper "Critical Confabulation: Can LLMs Hallucinate for Social Good?" Poster session details are here: iclr.cc/virtual/2026...
iclr.cc
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Melanie Walsh @mellymeldubs.bsky.social · 22/04/2026
I wrote about Infinite Jest’s wild 30-year journey online—from feminist YouTube stunts to sexist 4chan posts to Luigi Mangione’s Goodreads. How far down the rabbit hole do DFW bros go? What do the memes reveal about our relationship to literature & the internet? lareviewofbooks.org/article/infi...
lareviewofbooks.org
‘Infinite Jest,’ the Internet, and the Politics of Reading | Los Angeles Review of Books
On the internet reception and collective reading of David Foster Wallace’s magnum opus, on the occasion of its 30th anniversary reissue.
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Richard Jean So @richardjeanso.bsky.social · 15/04/2026
Excited to announce, w/ @hoytlong.bsky.social, @ari-holtzman.bsky.social & Emily Wenger, that we won a Schmidt Science AI grant to build AI systems for storytelling + narrative world making. How do you get AI to tell immersive, believable, interesting stories? www.schmidtsciences.org/2026-humanit...
schmidtsciences.org
2026 Humanities and AI Virtual Institute Development Awards - Schmidt Sciences
Schmidt Sciences’ Humanities and AI Virtual Institute (HAVI) is supporting 11 global interdisciplinary research teams to explore collaborative AI interventions with the potential to catalyze major bre...
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Cat Hicks @grimalkina.bsky.social · 02/04/2026
"80% of the time" bafflingly misleading way to frame the use of AI IN AN EXPERIMENTAL TASK where people were explicitly given this as an option, not some kind of observation across all their waking lives.
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Richard Jean So @richardjeanso.bsky.social · 30/03/2026
Great 2-year postdoc for a digital humanities/I school/computational culture scholar to work on computer vision + film/TV w/ great colleagues @ Distant Viewing Lab @nolauren.bsky.social (U of Richmond). These guys are doing cutting edge stuff, apply! richmond.wd5.myworkdayjobs.com/en-US/staff_...
richmond.wd5.myworkdayjobs.com
Postdoctoral Research Associate
The Data Science and Statistics Program at the University of Richmond invites applications for a two-year postdoctoral research position in the Distant Viewing Lab, to begin in August 2026. This posit...
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Richard Jean So @richardjeanso.bsky.social · 25/03/2026
Excited to share this new paper - accepted at CHI - testing the affordances of AI assistance for literary-cultural interpretation or "close reading" w/ @jiayinzhi.bsky.social @mnlee.bsky.social + @hoytlong.bsky.social. Can AI help students/people interpret cultural objects? arxiv.org/html/2603.06...
arxiv.org
What Does AI Do for Cultural Interpretation? A Randomized Experiment on Close Reading Poems with Exposure to AI Interpretation
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Jiayin Zhi @jiayinzhi.bsky.social · 16/03/2026
𝑪𝒂𝒏 𝑨𝑰 𝒉𝒆𝒍𝒑 𝒖𝒔 𝒊𝒏𝒕𝒆𝒓𝒑𝒓𝒆𝒕 𝒄𝒖𝒍𝒕𝒖𝒓𝒆? In our new #CHI2026 paper, we studied how AI assistance affects close reading poems — not just how well people interpret poems, but also the pleasure derived from close reading. closereading-ai.app #AI #HCI #closereading #humanities #culture #poetry (1/13)
closereading-ai.app
[AI and Close Reading] Can AI help us interpret culture?
AI is already becoming part of how people read cultural texts online. What does AI do for cultural interpretation? We explored this question in a randomized experiment investigating the impact of AI a...
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Richard Jean So @richardjeanso.bsky.social · 13/03/2026
The talk is based on a paper I co wrote with @eduede.bsky.social @hoytlong.bsky.social & Patrick Sui that is accepted and forthcoming at ICLR 2026. Here's the preprint: arxiv.org/abs/2511.07722
arxiv.org
Critical Confabulation: Can LLMs Hallucinate for Social Good?
LLMs hallucinate, yet some confabulations can have social affordances if carefully bounded. We propose critical confabulation (inspired by critical fabulation from literary and social theory), the use...
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Ryan Heuser @ryanheuser.com · 26/02/2026
I'm on a 38(!)-author paper just published in Frontiers in Artificial Intelligence, "Computational hermeneutics: evaluating generative AI as a cultural technology". We splice Schleiermacher and hermeneutic theory into AI debates, arguing AI are "context machines". www.frontiersin.org/journals/art...
frontiersin.org
Frontiers | Computational hermeneutics: evaluating generative AI as a cultural technology
Generative AI (GenAI) systems are increasingly recognized as cultural technologies, yet current evaluation frameworks often treat culture as a variable to be...
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Richard Jean So @richardjeanso.bsky.social · 04/02/2026
New paper on Why Slop Matters w/ great group of co authors (@hoytlong.bsky.social @eduede.bsky.social @ari-holtzman.bsky.social + others not on Bluesky) from ACM AI Letters. We try to move the debate re: AI Slop past normative, neg claims & towards parsing its social uses. dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/...
dl.acm.org
Why Slop Matters | ACM AI Letters
AI-generated “slop” is often seen as digital pollution. We argue that this dismissal of the topic risks missing important aspects of AI Slop which deserve rigorous study. AI Slop serves a social funct...
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Richard Jean So @richardjeanso.bsky.social · 05/01/2026
New paper in AI & Society w/ @hoytlong.bsky.social + @teddyroland.bsky.social! We simulated 101 "AI authors" to see how LLMs imagine creativity & cultural distinction + compared them to real historical authors. What do AI authors want & how do they pursue success? link.springer.com/article/10.1...
link.springer.com
The social AI author: modeling creativity and distinction in simulated cultural fields - AI & SOCIETY
This article examines generative AI models as sociocultural actors, focusing on how they reproduce and constrain notions of authorship and identity within the contemporary U.S. literary field. Through...
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Teddy Roland @teddyroland.bsky.social · 15/12/2025
New article in AI & Society with @richardjeanso.bsky.social and @hoytlong.bsky.social 🎉 We wanted to know how AI might affect cultural fields like literary publishing. But cultural production is complex! So we piloted a new method we call “social simulation.” rdcu.be/eTkMy
rdcu.be
The social AI author: modeling creativity and distinction in simulated cultural fields
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Maria Antoniak @mariaa.bsky.social · 20/11/2025
Honored to be part of this initiative to explore "Humanistic AI"! Hosted at the University of Chicago and led by @hoytlong.bsky.social and Chris Kennedy, we're collaborating in a series of interdisciplinary workshops and projects to think about how the humanities can contribute to AI and vice versa.
news.uchicago.edu
New UChicago project explores how humanities can advance AI research
Interdisciplinary group at the Neubauer Collegium to examine what generative AI reveals about humanistic knowledge and creativity
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Hoyt Long @hoytlong.bsky.social · 08/10/2025
In case you missed it, this "Doing AI Differently" funding call should be of interest to humanities scholars with technical experience, computer scientists with humanities grounding, or anyone whose work spans both domains. Take a look and please consider applying! www.ukri.org/opportunity/...
ukri.org
Expressions of interest: artificial intelligence humanities sandpits: Canada, UK and US
AHRC and SSHRC invite expressions of interest to attend a humanities-led, interdisciplinary research sandpit looking to put humanities insights and methodologies at the heart of artificial intelligenc...
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Ted Underwood @tedunderwood.com · 29/08/2025
New preprint on "Computational Hermeneutics," co-authored by too many people to list in one post. TL;DR: GenAI is a cultural technology, and needs to be evaluated in ways that recognize situatedness, plurality, and ambiguity as the conditions of meaning — not noise to be minimized.
papers.ssrn.com
Computational Hermeneutics: Evaluating Generative AI as a Cultural Technology
<div> <div> <div> <p>Generative AI (GenAI) systems are increasingly recognized as cultural technologies, yet current evaluation frameworks often treat cul
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Brian Tyler Cohen @briantylercohen.bsky.social · 14/06/2025
Donald Trump does NOT want you to share this footage of his pathetically tiny birthday parade crowd.
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Melanie Walsh @mellymeldubs.bsky.social · 28/02/2025
Excited to share our preprint "Provocations from the Humanities for Generative AI Research” We're open to feedback—read & share thoughts! @laurenfklein.bsky.social @mmvty.bsky.social @docdre.distributedblackness.net @mariaa.bsky.social @jmjafrx.bsky.social @nolauren.bsky.social @dmimno.bsky.social
Screenshot of the first page of preprint, "Provocations from the Humanities for Generative AI Research," by Lauren Klein, Meredith Martin, Andre Brock, Maria Antoniak, Melanie Walsh, Jessica Marie Johnson, Lauren Tilton, and David Mimno
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Maria Antoniak @mariaa.bsky.social · 27/01/2025
Aaaaah good timing, published today! "we introduce Mini Worldlit, a manually curated dataset of 1,192 works of contemporary fiction from 13 countries, representing nine languages" By @andrewpiper.bsky.social, @dbamman.bsky.social, Christina Han, Jens Bjerring-Hansen, @hoytlong.bsky.social, et al.
openhumanitiesdata.metajnl.com
Mini Worldlit: A Dataset of Contemporary Fiction from 13 Countries, Nine Languages, and Five Continents | Journal of Open Humanities Data
The Journal of Open Humanities Data (JOHD) aims to be a key part of a thriving community of scholars sharing humanities data. The journal features peer reviewed publications describing humanities rese...
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Ted Underwood @tedunderwood.com · 20/11/2024
If you're depressed that non-expert readers prefer AI-written poetry to the classics, perhaps try Matt's quiz. You may discover that the real finding here is the huge gulf between your own taste and that of non-expert readers ... a gulf that has likely existed at least since, oh, IA Richards?
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Mina Lee @mnlee.bsky.social · 18/11/2024
Interested in writing with AI? ✍️ Please apply to be a **postdoc** in my group through the UChicago DSI Scholars program! 🤠 - Research in my group: minalee-research.github.io/research.html - Application: datascience.uchicago.edu/research/pos... (review begins on Dec 6)
media.tenor.com
a man holding up a picture with the words there that 's my resume written below him
ALT: a man holding up a picture with the words there that 's my resume written below him
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Maria Antoniak @mariaa.bsky.social · 19/11/2024
I'm recruiting 1-2 PhD students to work with me at the University of Colorado Boulder! Looking for creative students with interests in #NLP and #CulturalAnalytics. Boulder is a lovely college town 30 minutes from Denver and 1 hour from Rocky Mountain National Park 😎 Apply by December 15th!
A photo of Boulder, Colorado, shot from above the university campus and looking toward the Flatirons.
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Marc Steinberg @msteinbrg.bsky.social · 10/11/2024
Internet studies people unite! Internet studies starter pack is here - incomplete, skewed etc etc but some fantastic folks, to help us all rebuild our social networks. Happy to add you if I left you out! Please circulate, and here it is: go.bsky.app/KHmxfWf
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Hoyt Long @hoytlong.bsky.social · 12/11/2024
AOC returning to BlueSky and you can feel the place light up...
media.tenor.com
a close up of a woman wearing a necklace and a white shirt .
ALT: a close up of a woman wearing a necklace and a white shirt .
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Melanie Walsh @mellymeldubs.bsky.social · 11/11/2024
I'm recruiting a PhD student to join my group in 2025-2026. If you like the mountains and interdisciplinary research that blends data and culture, this could be a good fit! UW iSchool PhD apps due Dec 2nd: ischool.uw.edu/programs/phd... More info about my group: melaniewalsh.org/mentorship
melaniewalsh.org
mentorship | Melanie Walsh
Assistant Professor at UW in Seattle. Data science, digital humanities, literature, culture.
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Hoyt Long @hoytlong.bsky.social · 09/11/2024
"Based on what you know about me, draw a picture of what you think my life looks like." I don't ask Chat many personal questions, so it thinks I live a cozy, data-filled life. And well organized, too! Although wall-of-monitors is not my idea of cozy.
An image that captures a cozy, data-focused workspace reflecting elements of your analytical world.
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David Bamman @dbamman.bsky.social · 30/09/2024
My group just finished up a new paper that I'm excited to get out into the world: "On Classification with Large Language Models in Cultural Analytics" (to be published at CHR): github.com/bamman-group...
github.com
GitHub - bamman-group/ca-classification-data: Data and code to support "On Classification with Large Language Models in Cultural Analytics"
Data and code to support "On Classification with Large Language Models in Cultural Analytics" - bamman-group/ca-classification-data
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Michael K. Bourdaghs @mbourdaghs.bsky.social · 13/09/2024
We're excited that UChicago Humanities Division has approved 2 searches for Assistant Professors in Korean Studies this year. One is in East Asian Languages & Civilizations and includes the fields of media, performance, literature, and popular culture: apply.interfolio.com/153011. EOE/Vet/Disability
apply.interfolio.com
Apply - Interfolio {{$ctrl.$state.data.pageTitle}} - Apply - Interfolio
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Dan Sinykin @dan-sinnamon.bsky.social · 19/06/2024
The last four years have been the best for nonwhite fiction writers in US history, Richard Jean So & I found. But all signs point to backlash. What would it take actually to sustain—& grow? We wrote about it for @theatlantic.bsky.social www.theatlantic.com/books/archiv...
theatlantic.com
The Pendulum Swings on Diversity in Publishing
A new study reveals positive changes since 2020. But can they last?
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Aarthi Vadde @aarthivadde.bsky.social · 29/03/2024
Web-based fandoms are intimate publics at scale. @richardjeanso.bsky.social and I use close reading/stats to study the narrative/rhetorical features of fanfic and commentary on AO3. Fandoms are part of literary history, and we show how to study these living archives of reader-response. No paywall!
muse.jhu.edu
Project MUSE - Fandom and Fictionality after the Social Web: A Computational Study of AO3
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Melanie Walsh @mellymeldubs.bsky.social · 03/01/2024
Hey MLA friends! If you're interested in Literature & LLMs, come check out our roundtable on Saturday! Awesome lineup of scholars working on AI in public, industry, cultural heritage, & more: @mkirschenbaum.bsky.social @jonathancheng.bsky.social @bcgl.bsky.social Carly Schnitzler & Anna Preus
Just in Time: Literature and Large Language Models: Where Are We Now?

Saturday, 6 January 2024
 1:45 PM - 3:00 PM
Marriott - 309–310 (Level 3)

Panelists—scholars who are working at the cutting-edge of literature and large language models in the academy, in public, in industry, and in cultural heritage institutions—address some of the most recent developments in large language models, such as ChatGPT and GPT-4, as they relate to literature broadly construed—its study, production, pedagogy, and use in commercial chatbots and tools.
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lindsay thomas @lindsaythomas.net · 08/12/2023
My piece about BookTok is now up as part of the new @atpost45.bsky.social cluster Reading with Algorithms! I write about how recommendation works on TT and do some light exploration of video metadata, but also about Barnes & Noble, 🌶️🌶️🌶️, joyfulness, and middle-class desire post45.org/2023/12/book...
post45.org
BookTok and the Rituals of Recommendation - Post45
If you’ve walked into your local Barnes & Noble bookstore recently, you likely encountered a table of BookTok books like the one pictured in Figure 1. Part book club, part fan community, and part so...
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Wenyi Shang @wenyishang.bsky.social · 20/09/2023
Officially on the job market! Graduating in 2024, I am navigating the academic job market. I use machine learning, text mining, and social network analysis to study human society, contributing to digital humanities and neighboring fields such as computational social science.
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Melanie Walsh @mellymeldubs.bsky.social · 07/12/2023
For the latest volume of Debates in the Digital Humanities, I wrote about the promises and challenges of social media data. My essay (and the entire volume) is now free and open-access dhdebates.gc.cuny.edu/read/f3f8744...
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Dr. Paula R. Curtis @paularcurtis.bsky.social · 29/11/2023
@vierth.bsky.social & I are pleased to announce that applications for our summer Dream Lab, East Asian Studies & Digital Humanities, are open! 🎉 This DH 101 through EAS workshop will prioritize applications from grad students & contingent faculty. Deadline is 3/8! web.sas.upenn.edu/dream-lab/ea...
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Hoyt Long @hoytlong.bsky.social · 09/11/2023
Tess McNulty offers a sobering assessment of how little we know (and can know) about what's popular on social media platforms. But also some hopeful visions for how scholars might redirect the narrative of what's on top. A must read for #TikTok researchers! www.publicbooks.org/whats-on-top...
publicbooks.org
What’s on Top of TikTok?
The videos of TikToks can easily reach billions. But because the app won’t share what’s popular, we don’t know just what the world is watching.
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Alexander Doria @dorialexander.bsky.social · 09/11/2023
I have just released the early modern ChatGPT, MonadGPT, currently running thanks to generous support from @huggingface.bsky.social Any question in English or French will be answered from the perspective of someone living between 1500 and 1750. huggingface.co/spaces/Pclan...
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Public Books @publicbooks.bsky.social · 08/11/2023
For the third article in our latest installment of “Hacking the Culture Industries,” Tess McNulty considers the striking difficulty in finding comprehensive data on popular social media content–and the concerning implications of this gap. www.publicbooks.org/whats-on-top...
publicbooks.org
What’s on Top of TikTok?
The videos of TikToks can easily reach billions. But because the app won’t share what’s popular, we don’t know just what the world is watching.
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Sarah Allison @sarahdallison.bsky.social · 08/11/2023
data-driven cultural criticism: *buying* televisual attention data (!!!!!) and seeing it by light of a zillion tweets (go spongebob, rip twitter 💙)
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Hoyt Long @hoytlong.bsky.social · 07/11/2023
Squid Game shocked the world with its viral popularity. But what does global success mean in an age of streaming platforms, hyper segmented audiences, algorithmic taste, and opaque data? @aarthivadde.bsky.social and I take a look for @publicbooks.bsky.social www.publicbooks.org/we-want-our-...
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Aarthi Vadde @aarthivadde.bsky.social · 07/11/2023
Cultural studies for the 21st century! This essay brings global audience demand data together with Twitter data across 3 languages to explain why we love catastrophe TV. We drew on essential TV theory and criticism by Mary Ann Doane, @pjmaciak.bsky.social, and @annakornbluh.bsky.social
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Public Books @publicbooks.bsky.social · 07/11/2023
For the second article in our latest installment of “Hacking the Culture Industries,” @hoytlong.bsky.social & @aarthivadde.bsky.social analyze the data behind our obsession w/catastrophe TV, which spans across seemingly unrelated or even counterintuitive genres. www.publicbooks.org/we-want-our-...
publicbooks.org
We Want Our Catastrophe TV
“We can ask why Squid Game was so popular. But really we should be asking how any show becomes a global success at all.”
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Dan Sinykin @dan-sinnamon.bsky.social · 07/11/2023
This hits *all* my sweet spots: Netflix global strategy + data-driven revelations revealing that we crave stressful TV amid catastrophes. Or: how Squid Game & Grey's Anatomy function identically. Rly: read this!! @aarthivadde.bsky.social + @hoytlong.bsky.social www.publicbooks.org/we-want-our-...
publicbooks.org
We Want Our Catastrophe TV
“We can ask why Squid Game was so popular. But really we should be asking how any show becomes a global success at all.”
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Hoyt Long @hoytlong.bsky.social · 07/11/2023
Squid Game shocked the world with its viral popularity. But what does global success mean in an age of streaming platforms, hyper segmented audiences, algorithmic taste, and opaque data? @aarthivadde.bsky.social and I take a look for @publicbooks.bsky.social www.publicbooks.org/we-want-our-...
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