Page 157 - AC/E Digital Culture Annual Report

is conceived as an eminently solitary act in its main phase, it has an important social role as a motivator, stimulus, enrichment and reinforcer of reading habits. Socialisation thus acts as the amniotic liquid that brings readers into contact and is conducive to positive attitudes towards reading, acting as a stimulus and reinforcement between peers. Today, in the digital environ- ment, this socialisation is particularly intense and is broadening its scope of action through the possibilities of so-called social reading.
Reading is a reflective and reactive attitude in that it triggers an internal activity in the reader or leads him to perform particular external actions. The notes, marks and underlining that readers can make privately in the print format turn into collaborative practices in digital read- ing. And so, with the use of social media, ways of reading are being transformed and the social reader is emerging, the protagonist of social reading which acquires greater consistency and meaning in the digital context. Social media act as a sounding board for works; they bring the author and the reader closer together and generate complementary information flows as well as exchanges and creation based around a work.
As the experts point out, in this interaction characterised by digital reading, which takes place through the social media, the reading process is undergoing interesting changes “in that it is not an isolated and intransitive act in which the interpretation is autonomous, but rather it is part of a context of relationships and conversations in which the author and other readers are involved in the decodifying systems and collaborate on them”.157
Digital reading is becoming more transitive and is thus helping establish links between people and weave plots that encourage the coexistence, communication and learning of the community as a whole.
The leading role of readers
Another of the aspects that characterise social reading is the growing role of readers and the consequent disintermediation of information networks. The new social technologies allow readers to express themselves freely without any sort of intermediation, making them ideal means of obtaining information and sharing opinions
on a particular book and/or author. These new media act as a source that complements the lit- erary criticism published in culture supplements and magazines, publishers’ press releases and the information published in the culture section of the traditional media.158
In view of the phenomena surrounding digital reading and the new behavioural patterns ad- opted by readers, education and culture spaces related to reading and its promotion must act accordingly, developing strategies for commu- nicating with citizens, readers and non-readers that take this new situation into account. Introducing new models for promoting reading based on encouraging networked conversations is undoubtedly an excellent means of boosting their action.
Organisations and agents who share the task
in the fields of both formal and non-formal education must take part and play a visible role in existing communities of readers or create circles of their own that incorporate the options which characterise these networks: exchanging reviews, comments and recommendations, drawing up reading lists, voting on titles and other participatory mechanisms. This change of model entails a new approach to the relationship with the target audience. In this new context cultural organisations must adapt their strategy for encouraging reading so that it is not limited to the one-way transmission of information but also enables readers to interpret the information with other potential readers and be part of the informative process.159
AC/E DIGITAL CULTURE ANNUAL REPORT 2018
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Readers in the digital age