This study is part of a larger project called The Fiction of Numbers, in which we locate and explore the intersections between the spheres of science, public discourse, policymaking and educational practices. We specifically examine how reading becomes a specific node, or discourse, where the changing ideas on societal, sociotechnical and educational imaginaries (cf Jasanoff, 2015; Rahm, 2019; Sundström Sjödin, 2017; 2019) and solutions take place. Drawing on Science and Technology Studies (STS), we are primarily concerned with how knowledge and facts are produced and naturalized; that is, how a phenomenon is produced as a matter of course and thus becomes difficult to question, and the ways in which values and politics of knowledge become invisible in this process (Dussauge et al. 2015; Latour, 1987, 1993).

In this sub-study, we “trace” – in Latour’s (2007) sense of the word – specific ‘numbers’ related to reading that are regularly referred to in media as well as in educational and political settings in contemporary Sweden. The numbers are used in reading promoting arguments: it is claimed that seventeen-year-olds who read a lot have a vocabulary of 50,000 words, while their low-reading peers have only 15,000 words in their vocabulary. It is also argued that 50,000 words is what is needed to be able to read and understand a typical newspaper text.

These kinds of numerical claims circulate in the public discourse and are often unchallenged and presented as matters of facts. Uncontested, the numbers are left to do their work – efficient in establishing truths, suggesting impartiality and transparency, ‘strengthened by the historical relationship between numbers and rationality, objectivity and control’ (de Wilde & Franssen, 2016, p. 505; see Hacking, 1990; Porter, 1995). They stabilize beliefs about reading into hard facts. By that, they also naturalize reading as something inherently good and useful, and therefore difficult to question (Sundström Sjödin, 2019). Moreover, although the construction of the problem implies the construction of the recipient, i.e. the so-called troublesome subject, in this case it remains unclear for whom exactly the lack of reading is a problem (Marres, 2005).

In this study, we trace the specific numbers we encountered in various sites of what we call “the reading industrial complex” (Sundström Sjödin et al, in press). We trace the origins of these numbers, how they have been produced, and with what tools. In doing so, we aim to develop knowledge on how reading is constructed as a public problem and a societal desire and what role numbers play in this construction. This aim is specified in the following three research questions: I) Which actors are involved in the dissemination of particular numbers related to reading, and who are the (implied) addressees of these numbers? II) What societal and educational imaginaries and desires are embedded in these numbers? III) What are the “origins” of the numbers? How and for what purposes were they produced? Theoretically and methodologically, the study draws on concepts and sensibilities of STS to explore the processes of knowledge production and dissemination, developed in the section below.