What is it about?
Can poetry on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter be experimental literature? This article examines third-generation electronic literature created within corporate social media platforms rather than custom-coded interfaces. Analyzing Polish examples, an important strand in Poland's recent poetry landscape, I show that working within platform constraints like Twitter's character limits, Instagram's image requirements, and Facebook's reaction buttons can be as experimental as traditional avant-garde practices. By making interfaces visible rather than transparent, poets critically transform the tools designed to remain invisible into artistic material itself.
Featured Image
Photo by Julian on Unsplash
Why is it important?
This work challenges the view that experimental electronic literature requires custom-coded interfaces. By analyzing Polish poets working within corporate platforms, I demonstrate that third-generation e-literature maintains continuity with avant-garde traditions while critically engaging with contemporary digital culture. The Polish examples contribute to global e-literature studies with distinct practices and approaches. This is timely as most digital writing now occurs within closed social media platforms. Understanding how poets subvert and expose platform constraints offers new possibilities for digital creativity and insights into resisting corporate control of our digital expression.
Perspectives
Writing this article allowed me to show that poetry on our phones and social feeds deserves serious academic attention. Working with Polish examples was particularly rewarding as these projects are witty, subversive, and deeply embedded in internet culture. Since writing this, my views have become more critical of platforms. Yet the central question still matters: how do we create meaningful art within spaces designed to control us? I hope this encourages readers to look critically at the interfaces we use daily and recognize both the creative resistance happening within them and their fundamental limitations.
Paulina Chorzewska-Rubik
Uniwersytet Łódzki
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Poetry in the Social Media Interfaces, January 2026, De Gruyter,
DOI: 10.1163/9789004730380_021.
You can read the full text:
Contributors
The following have contributed to this page
