Positioning the reader’s culture in the digital age: the subculture of "readers" in social networks

The article examines the place and radical changes in the functioning of the book (reader) culture in the modern digital era. The author substantiates the thesis that with all the threats from the transformation of cognitive skills in modern people that hinder the classical understanding of the reading process, the book as a cultural form does not disappear, but rather adapts to the world of "numbers". The problem is not so much in the preservation, but in the correct positioning the reader's culture adapted to the digital realities. Today, the book finally acquires the status of an object of consumption and is equated by "digitized" consumers with other sources of information, which in turn has long been regarded as a commodity. In this context, the article uses the term "positioning" to the process of popularizing the reader's culture and indicates the main "competitive advantage" of the book — the representation of culture as such (as a universal mechanism for transmitting the socio-cultural experience of humanity, as a system of values). As one of the options for positioning reading and books in the digital age in a language accessible to the digital generation, the article analyzed certain posts of the social network “VKontakte”. All posts related to the book and reading were classified according to the nature of the reader's self-presentation, the unique functions that the book and reading perform in the person's self-perception, and "non-traditional" ways of using the book. Based on the analysis, it was concluded that in the posts of social networks, the reader's culture is positioned as a kind of subculture, focused on a limited circle of adherents, who have their own language of communication, a specific lifestyle, signs of recognition of "their own", special emotions that are accessible and understandable only to "initiates".