Shakespeare and Social Media

The field of Shakespeare studies is becoming increasingly interested in the circulation of Shakespeares across social media platforms such as Twitter, YouTube and Facebook. An emerging body of scholarship offers important insights into the implications of social media and digital technologies for Shakespearean pedagogy and research. This essay provides a review of the literature and suggests some future directions that theorizations of Shakespeare in/ as social media might take. This essay encourages Shakespeare studies to interpret social media Shakespeares as an object of critical analysis, as well as understanding it as a teaching tool and research resource, while recognizing that these categories overlap. More specifically, the essay argues that social media Shakespeares denote a complex network of specific platforms, technologies, cultural signifiers and the agentive human users that make meaning through these. As users share Shakespeare content and connect with it via social media, they are simultaneously shaping Shakespeare’s current formations and being shaped by distinct yet interlinked technologies