What Makes adolescents want to read? Examining adolescents’ contemporary print and new media (fiction) leisure reading through mobile ethnography

Abstract

Drawing on data from a mobile ethnography study of 12 adolescents from one secondary school, this article proposes to examine the everyday digital reading resources and practices of Singapore adolescent youths to better understand the print and new media (fiction) leisure reading habits of adolescents. Mobile ethnography, with its capacity to capture adolescents’ actual reading through images, texts, and video recordings, provides a new way to document and understand the changing reading habits of adolescents. Participants documented their print and digital reading on a smartphone app over four days, followed by a photo-elicitation interview. Findings showed that these adolescents read for pleasure and were self-directed readers who invested time in reading various new media fiction texts such as ebooks, Japanese manga and fanfiction. Practices of new media reading include cross-media consumption, engagement in fandom behaviours, and interest-driven searching for diverse reading materials. Adolescents are motivated to read when the reading experience promises immersive entertainment. A good story, ease of access to interesting content and potential for multiple media engagements encourage adolescents’ volitional reading. Implications for curriculum and future research on adolescent volitional reading are discussed.

Keywords:

• Adolescents
• mobile ethnography
• new media
• print and digital reading
• volitional or leisure reading

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank Ms. Erna Sia Jingyun for her assistance with data collection and preliminary coding, as well as the school and students for their participation. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Singapore MOE and NIE NTU, Singapore.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

The data that support the findings of this study are available, upon request from https://doi.org/10.25340/R4/PXO0DE.

Additional information

Funding

This study (DEV02-20 LCE Designing School Libraries of the Future Study) was funded by Singapore Ministry of Education (MOE) under the Education Research Funding Programme and administered by National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. Ethics approval was obtained (IRB2019-03-026-04).