This article proposes a new conceptual framework for understanding poetry in the age of the internet. By combining literary and technologic theories into one theory named ‘Internetica’, it typifies the structures and roles of internet poetry and poets. A grounded analysis of 200 poems revealed three types of web poems: poems about the internet, poems first published on the internet, and poems written through the internet. The analysis presents various distinctions among these three types of poems, including their subjects, length, and originality. An integrative analysis of these categories allows for a redefinition of the role of poets in the digital age as playing witnesses: ever-present internet users, who, thanks to their creativity, witness the medium while playing with it by using the tools that it offers them.

In the summer of 2018, the New York Public Library Instagram page, and Mother—New York City creative company, launched a project named Insta Novels, presenting five canonic literary works in the form of an Instagram Story. Due to its interdisciplinary nature, Insta Novels offers a glimpse into the contradictions that arise when literature and its institutions intersect with social networks, advertising agencies, and digital media. This article explores the Insta Novels project as a case study of how remediation and mediatization serve as useful theoretical concepts, enabling the examination of cultural objects in the new media environment at both the macro and micro levels. A grounded analysis of the project’s stories, articles, and Instagram hashtags revealed four embedded tensions: between literature and technology; eternity and temporality; personal and public; and readers and users.