Components of reading culture: Insights from bibliometric analysis of 1991–2020 research

Abstract

In the digital age, the reading habits are gradually declining and poor reading skills are causing various informational and social challenges include lack of critical thinking and intellectual irresponsibility. The main objective of this study is to consolidate the published works to comprehend the influencing factors of reading culture. We examine the reading skills, reading habits and reading behaviour literature from 1991 to 2020 to measure the scope and depth of reading culture (RC) through bibliometric analysis and visualisation by utilising a VOSviewer software based on Web of Science database. These selected 1139 articles are classified according to year of publication, author, the country of publications and author affiliation. The analysis provided insights about the RC publication trends as the most productive years are 2017 and 2019. The United States, Spain and China are the leading countries contributing to reading culture-related publications. Jyväskylä University and Florida State University serve as the most productive institutions. Furthermore, we also conduct a thematic analysis based on the keywords to identify the components and influencing factors contributing to the reading culture. The four main components of the reading culture are identified as reading skills, behaviour, habits and factors. At the end, we provided propositions to support the reading culture and future research directions for the interest of Library and Information Science (LIS) professionals, academicians and researchers.