ABSTRACT
Reading habits change as digital devices encourage us to browse, skim, tap, and click, rather than read in depth; search for information, rather than go into deep reading of continuous prose, especially of long-form texts. Online reading encourages speed and the immediacy of experience at the expense of the length, complexity, and density of texts, which affects the plastic reading circuit and the cognitive modes involved across a generational divide. Reading onscreen emerges as the new normal; one in which memory and concentration are proving more challenging. Researchers and educators express the concern that these changes can hinder the development of the expert reading brain, thus affecting critical thinking, analytical skills, and the experience of empathy. The most significant goal of reading research in this context is to establish what specific training and what strategies of reading need to be employed in order to foster the bi-literate brain: one equally conversant in both digital tabular reading and long-form linear reading (Wolf, 2018). I argue for studying through distant reading methodology datasets of readers’ contributions on social platforms for writing, which activate collective reading and can involve collaborative meaning-making and critical evaluation of fiction in order to meet this goal.
