From "The Transmutation of Reading", we can see the cultivation of national reading literacy

【New Books in Academia】

■ Chen Xi

■ The publishing industry should use big data to face up to the fact that the concept of reading has changed, and realize the digitization of content, marketing, and management; of course, no matter how transformed, the publishing industry is always the content industry, and the most important and important role that publishers should adhere to is the "gatekeeper" of high-quality content.

Letting data make reading visible will also allow people to increase their control over reading behavior. Trying to build a "reading community" is also a good way to develop good reading habits.

At some leisure time, I opened a paper book that I had long been looking forward to reading, made a detailed reading plan, and then prepared to read it carefully. Who knows, only a few pages, I heard the message prompt tone of the mobile phone, is there any urgent matter to deal with? So, you put down the book and open the phone, just finished processing the message, the news software popped up another major news, you think it is necessary to understand the event, so you start browsing the news again. I didn't pay attention, I had been looking at my phone for half an hour, but I hadn't read much of the book. This phenomenon, some experts call "dyslexia".

"Dyslexia" points more to the disorder of engaging in deep reading. We still read every day, but today, most people's reading is mainly on electronic devices, relying on new media, showing a trend of fragmentation, shallow reading, and visualization. Over time, it makes it difficult to continue to read deeply and seriously. A few days ago, writer and publisher Xu Zhiyuan admitted in the podcast program that he also had some symptoms of "dyslexia". This "disease" has spread widely, and has even "infected" some book industry practitioners.

So, is it appropriate to call this phenomenon a "symptom"? Is this just a reasonable result of the transformation of reading in the new media era, or is it an inevitable trend caused by media change? We "read" every day, and we often think about the content of "reading", but have we paid deep attention to and thought about the changes in the behavior of "reading" itself and its impact on our cognition? On the eve of World Book Day, Wu Yun, director of the Department of Journalism and Communication of Zhejiang University and one of the first "Zhijiang Young Scholars" in Zhejiang Province, published "The Transmutation of Reading: A Multidimensional Investigation of New Media Reading" (hereinafter referred to as "The Transmutation of Reading"), which systematically sorted out the changes in "reading" in Different Historical Environments in China, comprehensively observed the public's current reading behavior, innovatively constructed theoretical models such as new media reading intentions, and put forward feasible suggestions for the transformation path of the publishing industry and the strategy of improving national reading literacy , providing a solution for curing the "reading disease" in contemporary society.

Media change leads to reading "updates"

As the 20th-century original media theorist McLuhan put it, "media is information"—the medium determines the nature of the culture it expresses—so does what we get from reading change as the medium we read becomes digitized? And as Marianne Wolfe, a scholar of reading and language studies, puts it, "We are not only the product of the books we read, but also the way we read them." So, how have changes in the way we read changed the way we think and how effectively we read?

First of all, it is necessary to clearly define the concept of "reading" in the new media environment and explore the characteristics of "new media reading" in combination with reality. The book "The Transmutation of Reading" defines "reading" and "new media reading" in a new way, explores the composition of information literacy and psychological cognition mechanism in new media reading behavior from multiple angles, and constructs an information acceptance model of new media reading behavior. The author defines "reading" as the psychological process of readers decoding the language and text materials of visual input to obtain information and extract meaning, and defines "new media reading" as a hypertext reading behavior that completes the construction of meaning through modern information technology such as the Internet and mobile communications, using digital equipment such as computers and mobile phones as carriers and transmission tools to obtain multimedia synthesis information and knowledge including text, sound, pictures, and videos. New media reading has the characteristics of rich information, convenient and fast, strong personalization, easy copying, and strong interactivity. From this set of definitions, it can be seen that new media can be described as a "rebirth" of reading, which greatly broadens the boundaries of the concept of reading and enriches the form of reading.

The Compensatory Media Theory of the American scholar Paul Levinson holds that any subsequent medium is a compensation for a certain medium in the past, and this compensation will produce new defects. Indeed, these "fashionable" reading vehicles, on the one hand, make us happy to see more possibilities, on the other hand, they also have obvious flaws.

One of the obvious shortcomings is that the popularity of new media today allows information to reach the audience faster and more, and people's attention is gradually scattered, especially the post-95s, post-00s and other Internet natives, because they have been immersed in the Internet environment since childhood, they are more dependent on new digital media, and reading is more likely to be fragmented and tend to read shallowly. The study of the reading behavior of college students in the book "The Transmutation of Reading" has well verified this point, and the integrated reading behavior has increasingly become the mainstream of college students' reading behavior, but the current college students' integrated reading behavior is insufficient, the proportion of digital reading behavior is too high, and the imbalance between "deep reading" and "shallow reading" is obvious.

Although people can obtain knowledge information through practice, hearing, or other means, reading is still indispensable, and deep reading is necessary for deep cultivation in a field of knowledge. Therefore, "dyslexia" is likely to lead to insufficient depth of individuals in society to obtain knowledge and information, and the ability to think about knowledge and information is weakened.

Readers' reading problems trap the publisher?

Audio-visual media formats such as short videos have been advancing in recent years, and various operators are also hollowing out their minds to compete for people's attention. At present, does the video and live broadcasting industry occupy the attention of most of the audience? This can be seen in the behavior of many publishers: many publishing institutions focus their marketing on live streaming. The media expressions of "live broadcast" and "short video" are indeed easier to attract readers' attention than words, and it is lamentable that the reading carried by paper books seems to be depreciating. In the wave of shouting in the live broadcast room, books have also been sold in batches with gimmicks such as "the lowest price on the whole network that bloggers strive for", and the controversial "one-dollar book sale" incident of a blogger last year is a typical representative. Many publishers were indignant about this, questioning whether the move would revitalize or strangle the publishing industry.

On March 1 this year, the State Press and Publication Administration issued the "Notice on Doing a Good Job in the Key Management of Printing and Distribution in 2022", proposing to carry out special rectification of the online book market order and focus on rectifying low-cost online live broadcasts with books for sale. It can be seen that at the macro level, the problem of live book sales needs to be treated urgently.

Why has the publishing industry been so strongly impacted by the Internet? On the one hand, mass pop culture and consumer culture have always pursued fast and pleasure, and the short video industry fits this trend, and some people are prone to lose patience with text in the image age.

On the other hand, the publishing industry needs to pay urgent attention to the fact that the publishing industry has not yet been fully prepared for this wave of transformation. The book "The Transmutation of Reading" points out that the publishing industry has always been regarded by many as an industry that emphasizes artistic pursuit and professional experience and lacks scientific evidence, which is particularly evident in the behavior of the publishing market. Japanese publishing scholar Hideo Shimizu once expounded the following views on the randomness, contingency and risk of publishing activities: "Publishing as a company is a mixture of pre-modernity, modernity and ultra-modernity. "For a long time, the publishing industry has been seen as a model of pre-modern enterprises. Some of the idealistic overtones expressed by many publishers also make the publishing industry more or less transcendent or even detached from modernity. Publishers often lament that the golden age of the industry has passed, and it is indeed necessary to find a transformation path. The book "The Transmutation of Reading" puts forward suggestions on the transformation of the publishing industry in the digital age - the publishing industry should use big data to face up to the fact that the concept of reading has changed, and realize the digitization of content, marketing, and management; of course, no matter how transformed, the publishing industry is always the content industry, and the most important and important role of publishers is still the "gatekeeper" of high-quality content.

Society should confront the problem of reading head-on

Since many members of the public have more or less "dyslexia", should they accept this fact and abandon treatment? Of course not, the more we are in an environment where content is fragmented, the more we have to face the "difficulty of reading", fight against the lazy "instinct", and build a dam for the loss of reading literacy. Studies have pointed out that the instinct of the human brain is to seek advantage and avoid harm, which leads to people preferring to do something light and stress-free. Much of the fragmented and entertaining content on the Internet is pandering to the needs of the human brain. Acquiring in-depth knowledge is a serious act that requires long periods of concentration. Therefore, we need to help our brains resist many temptations to find ways to guarantee the duration of "deep reading". The "quantified self" and "reading community" proposed in the book "The Transmutation of Reading" are good ways for people to cure "dyslexia".

The concept of "quantified self" was proposed by Kevin Kelly, editor-in-chief of the famous Wired magazine, which refers to the process of people using tools to monitor their own state and behavior for the purpose of self-reflection and self-knowledge acquisition. "The Transmutation of Reading" sorts out the "quantified self" of reading behavior, including three aspects: reading time, reading results, and reading content; specific methods include quantitative management of fragmented content, quantitative management of fragmented time, tracking reading attention, condensing attention with interest, and using visual maps to motivate the next round of reading. In short, making data traceable to read will also allow people to strengthen their control over reading behavior.

Trying to build a "reading community" is also a good way to develop good reading habits. On the online reading APP, reading has shifted from private behavior to semi-public behavior, people can record their reading behavior and show their reading thoughts, or share their reading on social software, which makes reading behavior more exposed. On this basis, people can try to restrain each other with "book friends" in the reading community, after all, when reading and social integration, people's social behavior has a certain performance tendency, and this behavioral tendency to shape a good image of themselves will also motivate people to complete reading goals in order to display reading results in the reading community. The reading community can not only promote the formation of good reading habits, but also promote the collision of people's ideas based on reading, so as to form a broader vision.

Whether it is society as a whole or an individual society, "reading" is a theme that should continue to be paid attention to and explored. Wu Yun, the author of "The Transmutation of Reading", has been deeply engaged in the field of publishing research for twenty years and has launched a series of books, and the new book published today can be called a "light encyclopedia" on reading problems, whether readers, researchers or publishing practitioners, I believe that they can find a reference answer to reading problems or reading confusion from this book.

Deep reading is like a long journey, during which what you see and gain will be more precious and unforgettable than the scenery glimpsed by the floating light. People try to build their own solid reading system in the environment of information explosion and fragmentation, and they will gain a deeper sense of happiness from reading. Reading is related to the quality of the nation and the level of national knowledge and culture, and persistent reading, paying attention to the changes in reading literacy and reading behavior itself is a compulsory course that each of us should not be lazy, rather than only paying attention to this issue on World Reading Day on 23 April. (The author is the editor of the "Cloud Listening" client of China Central Radio and Television Corporation)

Source: China Youth Daily client