Analogous versus Digital Reading. A Comparative Study - Acta Universitatis Sapientiae

Acta Universitatis Sapientiae, Philologica, 15, 1 (2023) 177–191

DOI: https://doi.org/10.2478/ausp-2023-0012

Abstract. The growing digitalization of our world is not only changing the way we process information but also raises new questions regarding the manner in which we read and comprehend digital texts. The way the digital text structures information is different from how traditional printed texts do it. Therefore, the receiver needs new strategies of text acquisition. It is not the well-known generalities related to the subject that my proposed study intends to regurgitate. Rather, it aims to focus on and attempts to explore some so far mostly ignored or only tangentially (if at all) mentioned aspects of the matter such as: 1) the literary (e.g. fictional) versus non-fiction nature of the digital text; 2) how digital reading culture affects analogue (print) reading culture; 3) a comparative generational view, i.e. similar or diverging features of the above factors, depending on whether the receiver of the text is a Generation X or a Generation Z reader, the former raised on printed books being the product of the “Gutenberg Galaxy,” while the latter is shaped both by the Gutenberg but primarily by the “Neumann Galaxy.”

Keywords: analogue reading, digital reading, fiction and non-fiction, e-book readers, e-books