The digital revolution is transforming not only how we communicate (faster,at much larger volumes, to a large extent through text rather than voice),but how we read more broadly.Digital and online materials can be produced faster, versioned (e.g. intodifferent languages), and distributed more cheaply than print materials.Materials can also be shared (rather than read by one person at a time),interacted with (through annotations, comments, reviews, interactivediscussions, embedded dictionaries, etc.), archived and searched moreeasily. Furthermore, much of what we read today in digital formats is writtenby other ‘normal people’ like ourselves (social media posts, messages, blogs,etc.) rather than professional authors mediated by a commercial publishingindustry. All of these factors ‘democratise’ reading and open up access.On the other hand, there are concerns about the quality of digital reading -both in terms of the quality of the content being read and the quality of thereading experience itself, i.e. the depth with which the reader engages withwhat they are reading. Various studies have shown that digital reading bystudents is not as good for learning as reading the same content on paper(Lang 2021).Since Covid-19, debates about the spread of digital materials for teaching andlearning in the schooling system have also accelerated. The NRS cannot commenton school-based reading pedagogy or materials, but similar questions are oftenposed about the wider reading ecosystem. When the project consulted stakeholdersabout key questions they wanted answered, concerns about digital reading, readingon smart phones and possible trade-offs between social media use and book readingwere prominent. So was curiosity about how digital reading is reshaping readingculture generally, and what opportunities it might provide.In response to these questions, the NRS included questions about social media use,digital device use for reading, and adult perceptions about digital reading by theirchildren.One of the NRS’ innovations is to include ‘reading for communication’ as a ‘readingpurpose’ and therefore to include the reading of (mostly) digital messages as a formof reading. As reported in Chapter 2, when analysed in relation to other forms ofreading, such as reading for information and reading for enjoyment, reading tocommunicate appears to augment rather than replaces these forms of reading.

Everyone is overloaded with information thanks to the digital revolution, so—the PKM people tell us—we need new software and systems to survive and thrive.