Digital media holds a strong presence in society today. Providers of digital media may choose to obtain a content rating for a given media item by submitting that item to a content rating authority. That authority will then issue a content rating that denotes to which age groups that media item is appropriate. Content rating authorities serve publishers in many countries for different forms of media such as television, music, video games, and mobile applications. Content ratings allow consumers to quickly determine whether or not a given media item is suitable to their age or preference. Literature, on the other hand, remains devoid of a comparable content rating authority. If a new, human-driven rating authority for literature were to be implemented, it would be impeded by the fact that literary content is published far more rapidly than are other forms of digital media; humans working for such an authority simply would not be able to issue accurate content ratings for items of literature at their current rate of production. Thus, to provide fast, automated content ratings to items of literature (i.e., books), we propose a computer-driven rating system which predicts a book's content rating within each of seven categories: 1) crude humor/language; 2) drug, alcohol, and tobacco use; 3) kissing; 4) profanity; 5) nudity; 6) sex and intimacy; and 7) violence and horror given the text of that book. Our computer-driven system circumvents the major hindrance to any theoretical human-driven rating system previously mentioned--namely infeasibility in time spent. Our work has demonstrated that mature content of literature can be accurately predicted through the use of natural language processing and machine learning techniques.

The starting point of this study is language and narration. The aim is to examine how educators reason by the choice of literature to work with in preschool. In my study I have examined how educators reason for the selection of books for preschool, which factors in the book affects the choice and the children’s influence. The empirical material is based on two focus groups. The participating educators in the examination discussed the subject together. By using three chosen books the educators in my study have reasoned around how the choice of books is done in preschool, what in the book is meaningful by the choice and the influence of the children. The result of the study shows that the educators reason towards a thematic aim by choice of books to work with in preschool. It also shows that the pictures are a central part for the children’s understanding of the book and also that the library is of great importance for the selection of litterateur for preschool. / Utgångspunkten för denna studie är temat språk och berättande. Syftet är att undersöka hur pedagoger resonerar vid val av litteratur att jobba med i förskolan. I min studie har jag undersökt hur pedagoger resonerar vid urval av böcker till förskolan, vilka faktorer i boken som påverkar valet och vilken påverkan barnen har. Det empiriska materialet bygger på två fokusgrupper. Pedagogerna som deltog i undersökningen diskuterade ämnet med varandra. Med hjälp av tre utvalda böcker har pedagogerna i min studie resonerat kring hur urval av böcker sker i förskolan, vad i boken är betydelsefullt vid valet samt barnens påverkan. Resultatet av studien visar att pedagogerna resonerar mot ett tematiskt mål vid val av böcker att arbeta med i förskolan. Det visar också att bilderna är en central del för barnens förståelse av boken samt att biblioteket har en stor betydelse för förskolans urval av litteratur.

The thesis focuses on bookfluencers – content creators that create content about books and reading. The study explores how they perceive the gifted books they receive from book publishers and other actors, which they are expected to create content about – often unpaid. The aim of the thesis is to investigate the aspirations behind bookfluencers’ content about gifted books and their experiences of reading them. Furthermore, it explores unpaid labour on social media platforms and attachment to art as an aspiration. How do bookfluencers on social media differ from literary critics in traditional media? The study’s methodology is semi-structured interviews with 10 Swedish bookfluencers. The theoretical framework consists of the concepts of “affective labor” (Hardt, 1999, p. 89; Hardt & Negri, 2004, p. 108), “aspirational labour” (Duffy, 2015, p. 443), “attunement” (Felski, 2020, p. 41) and “work-net” (Felski, 2020, p. 144). The analysis emphasizes on the labour behind creating content about gifted books, how bookfluencers position themselves and their content in relation to literary criticism, and the processes of attunement to books that they are gifted. Main findings are that seeing reading as an aspiration behind content gives bookfluencers a certain power to negotiate, despite collaborators’ demands. Defining themselves as book recommenders rather than literary critics may imply other expectations on their labour. Further, expectations from collaborators can affect bookfluencers’ reading experiences: the need to adapt their content to the book market can be seen as a form of affective labour. In the last section, the thesis discusses different processes that affect the reading experience of a gifted book, and how bookfluencers imagine getting paid for their work in the future. It problematizes how social media platforms do not pay their content creators. Thus, possible future research topics can explore bookfluencers’ relations to social media platforms and book streaming platforms further.