Tags
Posted for Kersti Nilsson by Tom Wilson
A part of the ‘E-book project’ is to investigate the context of the readers. The SOM and Nordicom surveys will contribute to the collection of quantitative data on uses and attitudes towards e-books and e-book reading (see blog below, Sunday DEC 2012). The results of these surveys will make fundaments of the qualitative data collection. Interviews, mainly in focus-groups consisting of 4 – 6 individuals, will give words to attitudes towards e-books and towards preferences in reading different types of literature in different formats. Will e-book reading be related to quick reading, browsing and over-viewing, for studying and professionalized reading? Or will e-book reading be related to great consumption of popular fiction? These are some attitudes that might be discussed among e-book readers.
Questions similar to these are already on-going in a research -project at University of Borås and Uppsala University. This project, ‘Reading Fiction in the Internet Society: The Function of Literature in the Personal Development and Social Orientation of Young Adults’, is one out of seven within the programme ‘Uses of Fiction’, financed by the Swedish Research Council 2011-2014. Data, quantitative and qualitative, are collected among young adults between 16-25 years old in theoretical and practical programmes in upper secondary schools and in folk high schools [a type of adult education institution in Sweden]. Among other things, the project aims to find out what thoughts, beliefs and emotions are concerned with reading fiction in printed books in relation to fiction in other media. Close to this is the question of different modes of reading according to different media and in relation to reading factual. Results from this project will also be used in the ‘E-book project’, mainly from the focus group interviews and individual interviews.