European Sociological Review Advance Access published online on August 3, 2009
European Sociological Review, doi:10.1093/esr/jcp039
The Legitimacy of Book Critics in the Age of the Internet and Omnivorousness: Expert Critics, Internet Critics and Peer Critics in Flanders and the Netherlands
Correspondence: Department of Media and Communication, Faculty of History and Arts, Erasmus University Rotterdam, PO Box 1738, NL-3000 DR Rotterdam, the Netherlands. Email: verboord{at}fhk.eur.nl
The aim of this article is to increase the understanding of how cultural consumers—in this era of increasing Internet usage and more omnivorous cultural taste patterns—use and rate different types of cultural mediators in informing themselves on cultural matters. We focus on how book readers in the Netherlands and Flanders consult critics of varying degrees of institutionalization (experts, Internet reviewers and peers). This research contributes to the overarching question of whether systems of value attribution are becoming less hierarchical in Western societies. The findings suggest that Internet-related information-retrieval practices have a limited effect on the perceived legitimacy of critics. Omnivorous taste patterns do lead to less belief in expert critics, but only if they concern patterns within one genre—the specific domain of book reading. Omnivorousness that implies combining several genres and topics is associated with higher ratings of all types of critics. Therefore, having broader informational needs and broader general taste repertoires leads to the inclusion of critics coming from outside the traditional literary institutions, but, at the same time, does not lead to the exclusion of expert critics.
Manuscript received: April 1, 2009.