Page 125 - AC/E Digital Culture Annual Report

every day to keep abreast of current affairs but state that they are not digital readers in surveys.
Indeed, as Luis González, director of Fundación Germán Sánchez Ruipérez states in his contri- bution to the report on La lectura en España (Reading in Spain) which came out this year:49
Reading can be taken to encompass a very broad range of cultural practices or as an activity limited to something much more specific. We can view this very rich polysemy as concentric circles like those in Dante’s Commedia. The outer circle encompasses an idea of reading that includes any reading activity whatever the purpose, context, format, duration
or type of content. From there, as they approach the centre, the circles progressively exclude aspects of this activity, for example, if it is not free-time reading or if the content is not literary or if it is not individually practised. So, what do Spanish respon- dents think when asked if they like reading?
We might add to this, what do Spanish respon- dents think when asked if they read? Data on Internet content consumption at least needs
to be added to all these reports, as otherwise the information will fail to include the many readers who browse the Web to keep abreast of news, communicate or engage in other activities related to new reading and writing practices.
In other words, these reports do not take into account the different reader profiles as a whole and therefore their results do not provide a true picture of reader profiles in Spain.
It is therefore no easy task to define the twen- ty-first-century reader (reader-author, reader- spectator, reader-interactor, reader-consumer.50) The usual approach consists in establishing different categories and definitions like those we have seen: in relation to volume of reading (fre- quent readers, occasional readers, non-readers), and the medium or format (analogue readers, digital readers).
The fact is that as a whole all of us are, or might be considered, readers: with more or less inten-
sity and time to spend on reading, of the latest news (in print media or digital media) as part of our daily activities, of fiction stories (on paper, on a screen or with headphones) during our periods of leisure, of the lyrics of our favourite songs during our daily travels or at a concert, of the plots of the series and films we watch on TV or at the cinema, of a scene depicted on a street poster or in a painting in a museum.
Indeed, we might say that it is impossible not to read:51 from the time we get up in the morning and check our mobile for notifications or gaze at our face in the mirror to “read” signs of having rested... when we go to the kitchen and choose a type of milk (full fat, low-fat, soy) or decide whether to have toast, cereal or muffins... when we go outside and read posters, traffic lights, and the faces and expressions of the people
we come across... in class or at work, when we engage in our various daily tasks; and, of course, whenever we grab our mobile even if it is only to read a WhatsApp message.
Granted, not all types of reading arouse the same degree of interest among readers. In the digital age, for example, content in audio and video format has particular characteristics and therefore requires different skills and abilities which we need to develop in order to become autonomous and critical readers capable of coping in today’s society.
An interesting space for reflecting on digital readers and focusing on children is the Grupo Gretel of the Universitat Autònoma de Barce- lona, which is directed by the lecturer Teresa Colomer. The group, led by Mireia Manresa and made up of researchers such as Marina Fitipaldi, Lucas Ramada and others, carries out research centred on the new digital fiction that is being created for children and teenagers, analysing the discourse and its influence on the shaping of literary readers.
For three years this group worked on the research project “Literatura infantil y juvenil
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Readers in the digital age