INTRODUCTION
Interventions regarding the development of individuals as well as of societies with the help of targeted measures can only be considered systematic, if it can be described what the precise individual or social variable is (or variables are) that is / are intended to be tackled. This is true although it of course requires effort to measure such variables. Many reading promotion activities, unfortunately, do not fulfill this requirement, at least not in an explicit and operational manner.
This article aims at developing the argumentation that reading is assumed to have positive effects and that reading promotion is, therefore, a good thing into one that considers the different positive effects of reading together with the evidence for those effects as well as the fact that they have to be balanced to allow for systematic planning and controlling of reading promotion measures. The main contribution of this article is firstly the intermediate concept of types of reading situations as well as a formalism to chart and to mediate between positive effects attributed to types of reading situations.
From having been looked at as an understood basic cultural skill and practice, reading has more recently become something that is said to do people and society explicitly good, based a whole range of positive effects attributed to it, from the obvious acquisition of knowledge to fostering empathy or well-being, increasingly even the development and support of a democratic mindset. On the other hand: watching a person reading a fashion blog on a smartphone while commuting to work, it does not seem necessarily plausible that such a kind of reading e.g. enhances well-being, at least not in a more sustainable way. We might be inclined to generalise from this observation and to assume that not all of the many forms of reading are equal concerning agendas behind reading promotion for the benefit of individuals and/or society. Nonetheless, it is empirically evidenced that reading – more precisely: reading under the circumstances of the studies – has positive effects, many different ones. Therefore it of course seems generally always sensible to promote reading – and luckily there are a whole lot of corresponding activities going on all over Europe that aim to promote reading. Reading is something good in itself, sure – but this insight does not help implement and control reading promotion activities that foster accurately and controllably specific positive effects of reading.
The connection between reading promotion activities on the one and targeted positive effects of reading on the other hand therefore has to be made more explicit – with the help of the mediating concept of reading situations and a supporting formalism. The argumentation goes as follows: as a result of a reading promotion activity, instances of particular types of reading situations have to be made more frequent in a target group, because they are identified to have the positive effect or the positive effects the reading promotion activity is meant to achieve in the end (rather than just ´more reading´), ideally as derived from an overall reading strategy. With the help of this construct, it can also been diagnosed afterwards, if the reading promotion activity has been succesful – in the sense that instances of the typical reading situation indeed have become more frequent.
The proposed formalism can manage more positive effects of reading than will be supported by actual empirical evidence in detail for a long time – and we have to keep track of more, too. With the immediate need for systematically managed reading promotion activities, I, therefore, do not see an alternative to using the formalism also for additional and possibly dissentingly weighted [1] assumptions concerning the positive effects of types of reading situations where there is no evidence (yet). In principle, the formalism has been designed to arrange evidence – but since the stakes are so high (we have to take more and better reading as a means to defend democracy now) and we have to move faster than further evidence comes in, it can – and should – also be used to transparently work with ´educated guesses´.
Reading in the context of this article is not considered very fundamentally as the extraction of meaning from arrangements of letters, but more narrowly as the deliberate activity of engaging with a text, following the free will of the reader or as recommended or suggested by a relative, a friend or an entitled person, e.g. a teacher.
This article draws in places on a whitepaper by Dörthe Fröhlich, Owena Reinke and myself [2].
PARAMETERS OF READING, TYPES OF READING SITUATIONS
Even excluding acts of the extraction of meaning from arranged letters in a purer form (see above) e.g. in the form of road signs or ballots, people read – deliberately engage with texts – in many different forms indeed; we can say that this results in an unestimable number of reading situations. This is still true if we do not consider reading in different historical periods or in cultures other than current Western-style consumer societies. With the help of parameters, interindividual reading situations can be described and classified into types of reading situations that share parameters and possibly abstract about others, because they can be seen as contingent, as not classificatorily relevant.
Here is a non-exhaustive collection of parameters to specify types of reading situations, with their values (examples in brackets) seen as answers to questions to be asked (the parameters):
- what is read? (book [which genre?]; newspaper / magazine / journal; website; social media presence; …)
- what was the internal motivation for or had externally influenced the reading as well as the choice of the reading material?
- does the reading take place …
- … as part of a (educational or professional) task or for leisure?
- … on paper or on a screen or as audio?
- … alone or in a group?
- … quietly or aloud?
- … in a dedicated reading set-up or not? (if so: in which set-up?)
- … as a ritualized part of life (if so: in which ´rhythm´, etc.?)?
- … in which length of a reading session?
More formally, types of reading situations can be seen as tuples of parameters and their values; following this, e.g. [reading material (what is read?): newspaper — reading motivation / influence and choice of reading material: curiosity for news — …: for leisure — …: on paper — …: alone / …: quietly — …] is a type of a reading situation. If there is evidence that e.g. reading certain reading materials conveys knowledge, we can assume that all types of reading situations (as tuples) with the corresponding value to this parameter (reading material / what is read?) have this positive effect (if not necessarily to the full, this will be exemplified below). Tokens of this example type are instances of reading situations a certain person engages in – in this case e.g: Christoph reads the 9 December issue of Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung due to his curiosity for news, and he does so for leisure, on paper, alone and quietly would be an instance of the mentioned type of reading situations.
WHAT READING PROMOTION CAN AND CAN NOT PROMOTE
As pointed out earlier, we can assume that reading promotion activities are initiated, because reading is seen to have a positive effects. Let´s assume the main positive effect targeted in a particular reading promotion activity is well-being. How can a reading promotion activity elicit well-being in people with the help of reading? Certainly not directly: reading effects are of course not accessible to outside measures. What reading promotion activities can do to (at least potentially) achieve the intended effect, however, is to try to have the target group – or an enlarged target group – engage more often in acts of a type of reading situations, of which it is evidenced or can be sensibly assumed that it prominently elicits well-being in readers. Reading promotion activities can only incentivise people to engage in particular types of reading situations – in the example given in types of situations that, ideally based on empirical research, enhance well-being. It can of course be assumed that most reading promotion activities at least implicitly saw this; to make systematic use of the insight, however, it needs a mapping between (socially plausible and interventionally manageable) types of reading situations and positive effects of reading, for concrete cases. I call this the specific ´signature´ of a type of reading situations concerning its different positive effects. These ´signatures´ can also serve as systematic input to the development of reading policies, as an idea generation tool as it were.
THE positive effects OF Reading: AN ARRANGEMENT PROPOSAL AND EXAMPLE EVIDENCE
The broadening and deepening reading discourse typically does take and concrete reading promotion activities at least implicitly have always taken positive effects of reading as their point of departure. There is an ample and diverse body of research on these effects and I would only like to outline the matter here; in a whitepaper [3] we have elaborated on that more systematically and more comprehensively.
For my purposes, I have grouped the positive effects of reading in the following way:
- enabling basic participation (for more and for evidence see chapter 3.2.2 and chapter 3.1 of our whitepaper)
- conveying knowledge (there is no specific body of research on this in the scholarly context we are situated in; it can be taken as a matter of course, however, since it is not least implied by the wide concept of reading as the extraction of meaning from arranged letters already. I therefore take the liberty to use this in the following as an obvious prior assumption)
- triggering imaginative capabilities (for more and for evidence see chapter chapter 3.2.1 of our whitepaper)
- eliciting empathy / pro-social behaviour (for more and for evidence see chapter chapter 3.2.1 of our whitepaper)
- achieving / maintaining health, overall well-being (for more and for evidence see chapter chapter 3.2.3 and chapter 3.2.4 of our whitepaper)
- social interaction (for more see chapter 2.3 of our whitepaper)
- giving aesthetic pleasure in the form of interacting with texts as ‘material’ objects (there is no specific body of research on this in the scholarly context we are situated in; since various reading materials, particularly books, are also considered exponents of an art form (which has given rise to literary criticism as well as to literary studies), I take the liberty to use this in the following as an obvious prior assumption)
- positive effects on the creative and cultural industries (CCI) (there is no specific body of research on this in the scholarly context we are situated in; since reading materials are typically also economic goods with a revenue model behind them (from subscription via pay-per-view to advertisement) and such positive effects are in fact a rationale for not a few reading promotion efforts, I take the liberty to use this in the following as an obvious prior assumption)
Obviously, not all types of reading situations can be expected to show all of the listed positive effects and if so they probably show them at different degrees. Whereas any deliberate engagement with a text in the sense of this article will help enabling basic participation (e.g. in the form of better reading abilities in a wide sense: road signs, ballots, etc.), social interaction is dependent on the context, the social embedding of the reading, and giving aesthetic pleasure is e.g. not an expected gratification of reading a (scholarly) journal.
Dörthe Fröhlich, Owena Reinke and myself have compiled a body of items of empirical evidence of positive effects of reading in the mentioned whitepaper [4]; in the following, I will give a few excerpts to demonstrate, how our account of the evidence for positive effects of reading feeds the following.
The first two excerpts concern empathy / pro-social behaviour:
- “The empathetic understanding gained by reading literature […] plays an important role in reducing preconceived ideas as well as prejudices. As reading allows readers to get in touch with certain cultural practices or groups of society, which are not normally an integrative part of their social environment, it permits them to expand their imagination and knowledge and reduce the tendency to judge (Blueyard, 2019). Various studies have analysed this effect: while Mazzocco et al. (2010) found out that individuals who read a fictional story promoting tolerance towards homosexuals indeed showed reduced rates of homosexual prejudice, Johnson et al. (2014) observed that participants exhibited lower categorical race bias when reading a fictional story about a counter-stereotypical Muslim woman in comparison to reading a descriptive summary. This is in accordance with a study by Johnson et al. (2013), the results of which indicate that the effect of inducing empathy and consequently reducing prejudices and stereotyping against, in this case, Arab Muslims only applies when reading narrative fiction” (p. 12 of the whitepaper).
- “The fact that reading fiction does not only positively influence social-cognitive abilities such as the development of empathy and the reduction of prejudices, but also leads to active behavioural changes in the everyday lives of readers and thus contributing to the functioning of society has been empirically proven in other studies (Johnson, 2012; Johnson et al., 2013; Koopman, 2015a). The results underline that readers tend to engage more in socalled pro-social behaviour in order to diminish other people’s distress after reading fiction. In the case of Koopman’s study, for example, the participants had the option to donate the money or parts thereof they had received for taking part in the experiment to charities related to the topics about which they had just read. The participants who decided to donate to foundations that help affected people to cope with grief or depression were more likely to do so when they had read a narrative text than when they had read an explanatory text (Koopmann, 2015a)” (p. 16/17 of our whitepaper).
The other two excerpts concern health / well-being:
- “This fact is reflected in a Canadian population study that shows a strong correlation between participation in various arts, culture and heritage activities, with book reading as one of the variables, and a person’s overall health, taking into account both physical and mental health. Even after adjusting the data for various socio-demographic factors, people who regularly read books of any form are significantly healthier than non-readers (Hill, 2021)” (p. 21 of our whitepaper).
- “[…] [A] study undertaken in the UK, which examined the emotional, social and psychological benefits of reading regularly for pleasure concluded that people who read an average of 30 minutes or more per week tend to be 20% more likely to have a greater life satisfaction (Galaxy & Quick Reads, 2015)“ (p. 23 of our whitepaper).
HOW READING SITUATIONS AND POSITIVE EFFECTS OF READING CAN BE MAPPED
The proceeding of systematically implementing and controlling a sensible reading promotion measure as proposed by this article is to 1) select the positive effect(s) of reading that are [ideally following an overall reading strategy] to be targeted in a selected target group, then to 2) specify typical reading situations that make sense in the reading culture of the society in question and that can empirically be evidenced (or for the time being at least as a result of educated guesses or analogies be assumed) to have the selected positive effect(s) and then to 3) develop reading promotion measures that make instances of the typical reading situations among the target group more likely, make them happen where they would not have happened without the measure.
Before I will give an example that shows, how this can be set to work in its natural sequence, I will introduce the formalism on the example of two example types of reading situations. These example reading situations shall be a) reading a borrowed genre fiction book (for leisure) in a printed book while commuting and b) reading educational media on a tablet in school.
The idea is to attribute the (currently) eight grouped positive effects of reading (see above) to the two types of reading situations. We cannot operate with exact values here; rather, it is proposed to attribute the positive effects at a certain percentage, depending on a knowledgeable interpretation of the evidence or corresponding educated guesses, respectively. Every type of reading situations – and there will be an individual set of those for every project – thus gets a specific ´signature´ of the positive effects to be expected for instances of them.
For the case of reading a genre fiction book for leisure, (the training effect for) participation can sensibly be assumed to be 100% (= 1 in the spider graph), the same is true for health / well-being which is related primarily to fiction. Since we do not know about possible antecedent or subsequent communication, we set social interaction to 0% (= 0). For the remaining dimensions, figures between 0% and 100% have been chosen; this is, – because the book has been borrowed and therefore there is a turnover for the cultural and creative industries only every certain number of reading instances (CCI: 20% = 0,2), – because genre literature can be assumed not to give the full amount of aesthetic pleasure (aesthetic pleasure: 30% = 0,3), – because empathy is related more to literary fiction in the evidence (empathy: 20% = 0,2), – because imaginative capabilities of whatever type of fiction can be interpreted as to be close to what is said about fiction (proper ? – this is a case where there is the necessity for interpretation …) in the evidence (imaginative capabilities: 80% = 0,8) and because to convey knowledge is not the main affordance of fiction, although it might show it to a lesser degree (knowledge: 30% = 0,3). For the case of reading educational media in school, participation (see above) as well as knowledge – arguably the main affordance of educational media –are set to 100% (= 1). Since the embedding in the classroom communication (as well as before and after) is not specified, social interaction is set to 0% (= 0), this also applies to aesthetic pleasure (0% = 0). Although imaginative capabilities are primarily related to fiction, they are – considering not only the aspirations but also the actual performance of current educational media – set to 50% = 0,5. With respect to health / well-being – also typically related to fiction – they are set to 0% = 0. Empathy is – descendingly – attributed first to literary fiction and then to fiction in general and not to non-fiction like educational media in the evidence (empathy: 0% = 0).
Arranged as spider graphs, this looks like this for the two types of reading situations:
In both cases, other individuals – based on new empirical evidence (see below), but first of all based on diverging judgments – might arrive at different results in places. It is important to see, though, that the spider graphs of the two example types of reading situations show remarkably different ´signatures´ (that can be made speak even more to analysts by arranging them in a serving order). Moreover, content analysis guidelines can secure sufficiently inter-subjective results within and across specific projects.
Put exemplarily into the operative sequence for the proposed application, a reading promotion agency (state or NGO) might – possibly based on an overall reading strategy – decide that, e.g. following the brain-rod debate, it wants to capitalise on the potential positive effects of reading on health and well-being, based on the evidence further focused on reading on print. The agency will have a set of analysed reading situations at its disposal and consider the ones that score highest in the health / well-being dimension. Among them – in our sample set only reading a genre book in a printed book while commuting scores high on health / well-being –, the agency will select one or more and try to bring the number of instances of these reading situations in the target group up as the operational objective of the measure. That it needs a whole lot of creative ideas to develop this measure in detail to achieve the mentioned objective, is another, challenging issue that cannot be covered in this article. Brainstorming about a possible catchy claim or a catchy visual for the campaign might confirm, however, that it is much easier to promote (i.e: let appear ´cool´) the reading of e.g. a new adult romance book from the public library (and therefor with almost no cost, but with contact points for communication) while commuting than to promote reading in general …
The context
The wider context of our ideas is given by Aldus Up [5], the network of European book fairs, co-funded by Creative Europe; an important part of the recent project (2020-2024) to foster this network was the attempt to provide more reliable data on what happens in book industry and book culture – primarily to give book fairs a better basis to develop strategies for their future in an increasingly virtual book world. Together with a few international colleagues, it was our task to take first steps to make the surveys on reading habits regularly done in a number of European countries more comparable. We did that by proposing an item set (ERICS: EuRopean Item Core Set for Reading Surveys [6]) for coming editions of these surveys and for new survey series to be initiated in other countries. This core item set has already helped to make a number of European surveys on reading habits more commensurable – and it is being rolled out to more countries.
While working on this item set, we realised that the main application area of reading surveys has been and will probably be reading promotion: to find out where there is the need for reading promotion and – later – if and to which degree reading promotion activities have achieved their objectives. Thinking about how reading surveys could be used systematically for these apparently central reading promotion purposes, it became clear that all of this only makes sense, if the positive effects of reading move to the centre explicitly. Therefore we authored the mentioned whitepaper. This article now uses the proposed signatures for a process model that describes the trajectory from positive effects of reading via types of reading situations that empirically or based on educated guesses promise to achieve these effects to targeted reading promotion measures that make instances of the identified types of reading situation more likely among the target group.
ConclusIonS, to-dos
Following the proposals made in this article, it will be possible to make reading promotion measures subject to a systematic proceeding – as it can be required from publicly funded (what they are, mostly) interventions, with the positive effects of reading in the centre. The proposals in their core are designed to present a tool to manage the different and very diverse positive effects of reading, to mediate between them for systematic and accountable reading promotion.
Luckily, we can assume that the research on reading, also specifically on the positive effects of reading, will go on, most probably even in an intensified manner. What I propose – in the core the mediating concepts of types of reading situations and a formalism to manage the positive effects of types of reading situations – will also have to be amended and updated over time. There will be descriptions and analyses of more types of reading situations to work with (I had only proposed two for demonstration purposes) and, more importantly, there will be more evidence of positive effects of reading, maybe even new groups of effects. Moreover, people will make alternative proposals concerning the selection, weighting and possibly arrangement of newly evidenced as well as already known positive effects in the signatures of types of reading situations.
On top of the positive effects of reading mentioned (most of them at least partly evidenced, as we have seen), the significance of reading for defending democracies has been stressed recently. We have seen that the evidence of all positive effects of reading is still fragmentary – this is even more true for the service reading is assumed to do for democracy, even if at least partly evidenced or sensibly assumed elements like knowledge – via the aspect of critical thinking – or empathy might be important components of this. On the other hand, the connection between positive effects of reading and democracy seems so obvious and the stakes and the time pressure so high that the best reading promotion measures that can be devised using the insights and the tools we have already should be continued to be rolled out with high priority. Notwithstanding, the evidence about the connex between reading and its positive effects has to be broadened by a large number of studies that have a lot of variables changing to achieve generalisable meta-results as it were – and particularly by specific studies on the (probably) composite positive effect of supporting a democratic mindset.
A corresponding argumentative call to arms could be phrased like this: there is clear empirical evidence that reading helps fit into society and supports health and well-being. Beyond that, it obviously conveys knowledge and gives aesthetic pleasure – and it is widely assumed to be an important prerequisite for democratic societies. But: we just cannot wait with major reading promotion initiatives until we have as much specific empirical evidence for that. We have to roll out the best measures we can contrive immediately!
NOTES AND BIBLIOGRAPHICAL REFERENCES
[1] With this I mean that empirical evidence is provided under the conditions of the individual studies each of which covers – in the terminology of the article – only a small number of types of reading situations. If we do not want to walk past obvious plausibilities and lose a powerful tool to create ideas and to control activities, we have to make assumptions / weightings, if and to what degree a positive effect of reading transfers to another type of reading situations. We have to make use of what we know and transparently make use also of what we do not know exactly (but can guess in an educated manner or by way of an analogy) in a consolidated manner. [2] Bläsi, Christoph / Fröhlich, Dörthe / Reinke, Owena: Reading situations, cumulative effects of reading, and their consequences for surveying and promoting reading. Mainz: Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz 2023; DOI: 10.25358/openscience-9065. [3] ibid. [4] ibid. [5] Aldus – European book fairs network / https://www.aldusnet.eu/ [6] ERICS 2.0. New guidelines for collecting comparable data on book reading in Europe | Aldus – European bookfairs network / https://www.aldusnet.eu/k-hub/erics-2-0-new-guidelines-collecting-comparable-data-book-reading-europe/ABSTRACT
The article explores the systematic promotion of reading as a means of fostering individual and societal development. It introduces a conceptual framework to categorize different reading contexts and proposes a formal model to measure the positive effects associated with these contexts. The work underscores the diverse benefits of reading, including knowledge acquisition, empathy, well-being, and democratic engagement, while advocating for evidence-based approaches in reading promotion strategies. By analyzing specific reading scenarios and their “signatures” of positive effects, the article provides actionable insights for policymakers and practitioners. The urgency of utilizing reading to address pressing global challenges, such as social inequality and ecological threats, is emphasized, coupled with a call to implement proactive measures even as research on the benefits of reading continues to evolve.
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Le immagini di copertina dello Speciale “Lettura e Sviluppo” di Letture Lente sono tratte dal progetto “Visionaria” di Alessandra Carloni, un ciclo di opere ispirate ad alcuni dei racconti di Italo Calvino – dal Barone Rampante a “Marcovaldo” fino alle “Le città invisibili” – presentate in una mostra a Palazzo della Cancelleria a Roma a Maggio 2024, curata dalla Galleria Dadart e con la curatela di Daniela Pronestì. Alessandra Carloni, nasce a Roma nel 1984, dove vive e lavora. Si diploma all’Accademia di Belle Arti di Roma nel 2008 e si laurea nel 2013 in Storia dell’arte contemporanea presso la Sapienza, Università di Roma. Dal 2009 inizia la sua attività come pittrice e artista, esponendo in personali e collettive in gallerie di Roma e in altre città italiane, vincendo diversi premi e concorsi. In parallelo inizia la sua attività anche come street artist, realizzando opere murali in diverse città e borghi italiani e all’estero, vincendo premi e riconoscimenti.
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