Digital reading practices among social science and exact science university students

Abstract

ICTs have transformed the reading experience from a diversification of platforms to the possibility of interacting with virtual communities. Consequently, we can observe a change of roles among the traditional intermediary institutions of reading. Therefore, the focus of this study is recognising the emerging reading practices among young university students to allow for the update of reading models and strategies within educational institutions. This study follows a quantitative paradigm and relies on data mining to identify classification rules and groupings in a population made up of university students of the Autonomous University from Yucatan, México. Results showed that both groups read for pleasure in various media such as social networks, websites, and online forums, as well as, students are able to locate patterns of response and reaction to the act of reading as participatory forms on the internet.