Changing reading paths in a digital age: What are the consequences for meaning-making?

Abstract

Abstract Everyday experience and a growing part of empirical research illustrate the changing reality of reading in our society in recent years. There are many empirical, pedagogical and philosophical studies that reflect on the falling level of general knowledge of the population and the superficiality of young people’s reading comprehension. In this study, we aim to identify and analyse how reading is changing with the emergence of a new text architecture and the replacement of alphabetic, print-based text with screen-based text, and ask whether this new ontological variant could also bring about a change in the epistemological “qualities” of reading. We go beyond the design of digital text itself to ask how changes in text design affect the role of alphabetic text in meaning-making. We then examine specific aspects of the change in the nature of reading itself and how they could lead to a paradigmatic change in pedagogy and literacy.