by Elizabeth M Young

Created on: July 09, 2011

In the traditional sense, a reader used to obtain one physical object, read the contents, then put the object down before picking up another object to read.

With internet reading, the only physical object is the computer or mobile device screen. There is not just static text and image. There are vastly differing presentations of rich content with videos, photographs, sound and graphic design options that never were possible before. The change in full reading immersion and focus is done with the click of a mouse, leading the reader as far as he or she wishes to go in investigating a subject.

There is no longer a need to tolerate unacceptable or weak content. The internet reader can simply move on to a web page that does a better job of answering the questions or presenting the desired material. As a result, internet readers develop a high level of intolerance for disappointing material. This leads to rapid abandonment or rejection of content that offers a weak presentation or introductory paragraph.

Content filtering and curating is making it much easier for internet readers to fill their own magazine and newspaper racks and virtual libraries. This makes it even more important for the writer or publisher to get the reader's attention by cranking out more high quality content than ever before. But high quality means different things to different readers. Publishers and critics used to decide what was best for readers. Now the readers are now deciding what is best for publishers and critics. 

Attention span issues may have origins in "multitasking" or time management and may not come from inability to focus for long periods of time. It might also be that the computer screen is subtly irritating and that readers adapt without knowing it by moving around more frequently. At any rate, internet readers are savvy, intolerant of low quality and are often and easily distracted by demands of their physical environments.

Internet readers can follow their individual and natural pathways of curiosity with so much ease that they will find themselves managing several browser tabs while deeply involved with a distant cousin of their original topic. When an interesting news article comes up, for example, the current style of publishing a brief summary of only the latest events will cause an interested reader to start heading for the Wikipedia, search engine, and other pages in order to get more understanding and background on the events that are unfolding.

Internet news

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