Det är så mycket lättillgängligare med TV-serier, typ: Ungdomars lustläsning i relation till digitala medier

Sammanfattning: Leisure reading among young people today is often considered to be under threat from digital activities, especially social media. In the scientific community, this position is disputed with no clear consensus. In order to gain an understanding of adolescents’ own views on the matter, we decided to interview groups of 15- and 16-year-olds in a Swedish public school. We wanted to find out how they define reading, what purposes reading and other media fulfill in their lives, and how reading interacts with digital activities. We followed the principles of Grounded Theory, basing the analysis on our empirical findings, and also integrated Uses and Gratifications Theory when studying the purposes of different types of media. Studying adolescent reading requires a clear definition of reading. Our interviewees associate reading first and foremost with printed books, while a closer scrutiny reveals that they often engage in forms of digital reading which are easily missed. Reading, however, seems to have “lost'' several purposes, mainly entertainment, to digitized media. Furthermore, the relationship between adolescent reading and digital activities is a complex one. On one hand, reading faces stiff competition from the digital world from the early teenage years and onwards, but on the other hand digital media offer a chance to discover new books and socialize with other readers. As part of the Grounded Theory framework, these findings form the basis of our own theory.