Abstract

The increasing prevalence of online reading prompted this review of the literature. Firstly, it sets out to determine what the research has revealed about reading comprehension as a print-based endeavor. Reader, text, and activity are identified as integral elements to the reading process and make up the developmental heuristic of the RAND reading study group for organizing research on reading. These elements also take place within a sociocultural context and affect the meaning that is made. Using the RAND reading study group heuristic, the literature review then explores the theories and findings that have emerged to explain the impact of the internet on reading and thus contribute to understandings of literacy in digital contexts to inform pedagogical practice. Ultimately, the literature shows that reading online is qualitatively different from reading print-based texts: texts are multimodal, and readers are more agentic as they have more ways to enter the text, act as coauthors and “exert” their agency on technology, and shape it for their own practices.