Promoting reading 1
activities. Digital book presentations also exist
in the form of book trailers, in other words, short films featuring books visually, in a format similar to the movie trailer. On YouTube, book trailers are produced by both amateurs and professionals. The Swedish website boktrailer.se features short films on current books and authors from Swedish publishers. The American web portal Digital Book Talk offers book trailers with amateur actors. The research has identified a potential in this activity for improving attitudes to reading among reluctant readers in the category of “digital natives”, i.e. those who have grown up in an age when computers and the Internet were already a substantial part of society. As regards book blogs, it has been concluded that there are many similarities between private bloggers’ way of presenting books and libraries’ methods of displaying literature and providing readers’ advisory services. In general, bloggers choose to write about recently published literature and the majority of their readers’ advisories are about novels. Library blogs seem to often reflect the blogger’s own personal preferences in terms of literature. The book’s sixth chapter is about social reading. This chapter concludes that there is a tendency in research as well as reading promotion practice to emphasise the social dimension of reading. It is argued that reading has not traditionally been perceived as a group activity, but for a generation where social interaction is continuous, reading also needs to become social. To generate reading motivation and improve attitudes to reading, schools and libraries ought to be working to establish a habit among children and young people of sharing their reading experiences. Young people will become engaged by literature if they get to talk about it. In a sense, reading is always social. In recent decades, research surrounding the actual process of learning to read has come to stress the importance of the social and cultural context within which all reading development occurs. The rise of the notion of literacy is testimony to this. Literacy, understood in its expanded meaning, is the ability not only to read and write but also to understand and use a variety of other symbol systems within a culture. In many ways, the practice of reading, from basic learning to read to advanced interpretation, can be regarded as a social practice. In addition, all “reading habits” – including reading alone in the privacy of one’s home – are socially produced and conditional on a “social infrastructure” that includes, for example, the material conditions necessary for book production, the education of readers, and the existence of libraries. In itself, the image of the lone, private reader can be regarded as a social construct that romanticises the individual and isolated author or reader. The questions of how, what, and why we read are determined in a social context. Nevertheless, there is a strong perception of reading as a solitary occupation. A reader is often portrayed as someone who withdraws into a private sphere to become part of a world that others do not share in. Researchers have described this as a cultural hegemony of the solitary reader. However, there are trends indicating that the picture of the isolated, solitary reader is not quite as dominant in reading culture as it once was. The renewed interest in book conversations, book circles, sharing reading tips and digital discussion forums can be interpreted as a component of a reading culture that has become very much social. An example of social reading on a large scale is the Mass Reading Event (MSE), such as TV and radio broadcast book clubs. Another example of 107