Online Literary Criticism: When Reader Becomes Critic

Literary criticism as a part of mass media communication is going through significant changes with the development of online media. We can see many new variations of criticism today. Reviewers and critics are active on social sites; they use blogs, vlogs and podcasts to spread information about new literature. Additionally, internet and social media also give space to laypersons who can also share their opinions on everything, on literature too. People are online the most of their time and it means online shopping, online reading and also online evaluating. With a little hyperbole, we can say that anyone can be a critic today. In addition to blogs, vlogs and podcasts, there are also specialized websites for reading and evaluating new books. One of the most popular, Goodreads, will help us to look at new aspects of literary criticism. In this paper, we will try to compare professional critiques with laic criticism, both in the online environment, to point out how literary criticism is changing these days. Comparison based on content analysis will help us to describe current variations of literary criticism.