Abstract

This paper presents an empirical research whose aim was to discover how readers read books on the digital screen. A theory of experience built under the so-called “Frankfurt school” framework contributed to design the method that shaped this study. Four Brazilian adult readers were individually interviewed with a semi-structured method (recorded and using no questionnaire). These interviews produced images of the objects focused in the research, from which it was possible to investigate the apperception of such objects and the relationships that the readers established with them. Ways in which the readers read books on the screen were highlighted and articulated to the immanent categories of books on the screen, allowing the individualization of patterns that participate in the reading experience. The floating reading, the frenetic reading and the efficient reading emerged as ways of reading books on the screen. In such ways, the reading activity is anchored in specific elements of the literary work, undertaken by a pragmatic and fearful reader, who is afraid to launch himself through new experiences. We consider that these reading trends take part in the new structures of experience, as well as in the cultural education of the individual in the Digital Era.

Reading; Books; New Media; Experience; Critical Theory