Reading as Communication Echo: Scientific model of the reader's feedback research

Summary

This work examines and explains the reading as feedback through the terms of the post-cybernetical paradigm. An object of the research is the reading as communication and post-communication, as a result of which is cumulated a field of objective feedback radiated from natural and professional readers. A subject of immediate research interest is the book as a media of reading, as a medium for transmission of knowledge and emotions around which is formed an information-resonance field for documentation of its influence over the society. It is defended the thesis that a key condition for the realization of the book as media is the obtaining of a feedback from its readers. Without the reading, every book is just a “pending message”, a latent communication unit. The methodology includes the theoretical tools of the cybernetics, the management, theory of communication and the bibliopsychology, the bibliographic search methods, bibliographic information retrieval and the modelling. Traditionally, the cybernetical concept of “feedback” is rationalized in the context of the post-cybernetical reincarnation of feedback in terms of the accelerating digitization and the transmediatization. A post-cybernetical paradigm in the communications defines the feedback as a reverse impact with a regulatory importance, as a corrective of information interaction. The toolkit of the bibliopsychology allows thinking about reader’s feedback as an exteriorization of the receptive content of the book. And the transfer of this concept into a mediatorial context redefines reading as an author's process in a communication inversion – with a change of the direction and of the subject of the message. Based on the principle of modelling it is built a spiral model of the reader’s resonance field as a cycle of eight phases of the feedback to the book. The resonance field is rationalized by the principle of holonomy and it is visualized through four models: the spiral communication model, the hierarchical model of a multilayered scientific book, the holonomic model of a cumulative science book based on the Matryoshka (Russian doll) principle, the so called “Matryoshka of resonance”. The conception of the reading as a “communication echo” (feedback) allows being derived a formula of Energy conversion efficiency (ECE) of the book. The conclusion is that a book of high efficiency is the one that systematically provokes feedback and the one that is in the continuous dynamics of a spiral communication cycle and cascade reactions from readers. An applied contribution of the study is the algorithm for studying of the reader's feedback with a book that has been approbated in an academic environment since 2003 till present. The algorithm is applicable both to the ecosystem of the book and other content industries as well as to the purposes of the political communications. The conclusion of the research is that in the resonance field (the field of reading as feedback) is passing an inversion process: the reader becomes from recipient an initiator who generates new spaces for full of matter and market use of the book (in the field of education, the tourism, the advertising, the goods and services industry etc.) and continues the process of revalorization of the book as a basic cultural media. Practical implications: Useful and interesting for scientific researchers in science studies, for scientists from the areas of theory of reading, book studies, librarianship, communication science, media studies, bibliopsychology, bibliosociology, or the study of books in society. Targeting the following categories of subjects: to content producers in the creative industries and enterprisers in the media, marketing, publishing and bookselling business – when choosing a strategy for offering commercial and free media content; to mediators in education – when choosing of teaching devices; to publishers, booksellers, and librarians; to every pragmatic reader – when choosing of personal media technology.