Older adults and digital reading : A survey of use and reading experience

Framed by the concepts of power, materiality and modality, this study aims to disentangle if and how older adults and seniors read and experience digital texts. An additional aim is whether the reading experience differs between a printed text and a digital text. By using a questionnaire that was distributed to reading circles at three different libraries in Northwest Skåne, 25 older adults participated (over 55 years old). The analysis, with a main focus on the aspects of materiality and modality shows that the reading experience differs between a printed text and a digital text. Some of the aspects that the respondents thought influenced the experience in different ways were the feeling of holding a book, the technical functions of a reading tool and the uncertainty that comes with the fact that technology is needed to be able to read