The Book Culture in the Context of Media Environment

This essay explores the evolution of book culture within the changing media environment, following its development from oral storytelling and manuscript traditions to print, electronic, and digital formats. It demonstrates how successive media innovations – including the printing press, newspapers, radio, television, the internet, and social media – have transformed the ways books are produced, distributed, promoted, and read, turning them from elite artifacts into widely accessible cultural goods. Particular attention is given to contemporary digital tools such as e-books, audiobooks, online platforms, augmented reality, and artificial intelligence, which expand opportunities for reading and learning while simultaneously challenging established publishing models and notions of deep, linear reading. The article engages with current debates about the alleged decline of reading in the digital age, arguing that reading practices have not disappeared but migrated into new environments where breadth of information often increases faster than depth of comprehension. It highlights the role of major international professional forums – among them European and Asian digital publishing congresses and expositions – in shaping strategies for integrating traditional and digital formats, protecting intellectual property, and ensuring accessibility and inclusivity. Special emphasis is placed on the problem of the digital divide, which restricts equal participation in global book culture and calls for coordinated responses from states, industry, and civil society. The essay concludes that, despite ongoing media transformations, book culture remains a dynamic and resilient foundation of human civilization, continuing to transmit knowledge, values, and imagination across generations.