Läsning i omedelbarhetens tidsålder. Diskurser om läsning och litteratur i mediariktad till barn och ungdomar

Sammanfattning: This two years master’s thesis in Library and Information Science examines book reviews and articles aboutbooks and authorship in media directed to children between the ages of 8 and 14. The aim is to increase knowledgeof children’s reading choices and view of reading. This is motivated by the decrease in literacy and sparetime reading among Swedish children and adolescents. The thesis’ methodology is based upon critical discourseanalysis developed by Norman Fairclough, and as complement to his theory John Tomlinsons sociologicaltheory of the condition of immediacy is used. Book reviews and articles from the Swedish magazine ”Kamratposten”were chosen to be the material for this study.The analyses revealed four different discourses about what constituted reading: a discourse of fiction, a discourseof speed, a discourse of excitement, and a discourse of originality. These were then discussed in the contextof social practice, drawing upon Tomlinsons theory of immediacy and several articles about children’s andadolescent’s relationships to new electronic medias. The major conclusion of the thesis’ study is that althoughthe reading habits among children and adolescents are changing, this do not need to be the cause of a nonreadingattitude but a result of a change in the way kids read and process information, caused by the emergenceof electronic media.