Visualising mobile audiobook practices before and during the pandemic : A case with Swedish young adults

The increasingly popular audiobook has become a highly mobile book format, possible to use on the go. Understanding where and when audiobooks are used is of relevance to those interested in changes in reading practices and information use. Building on rich material from a semi-structured study with ten Swedish young adult audiobook users (Tattersall Wallin, 2022a; 2022b), this poster explores mobile audiobook reading practices in 2020, both before and during the Covid-19 pandemic. The aim of this poster is to visualise some reading by listening practices found in the interview study, and explore how these complex and intricate practices are interwoven in everyday routine. These visualisations were first created by the author during the analysis of the transcribed interviews, to enable clearer understanding of the material at hand. Audiobook listening is here studied as a reading practice and conceptualised as reading by listening (Tattersall Wallin & Nolin, 2020; Tattersall Wallin, 2021). Based on the work of Schatzki (2002; 2005; 2010), practices are here understood as open-ended and routinised activities, which are situated in time and space and performed using tools or objects. This poster is part of a larger project exploring audiobook practices and two of the figures have been published in the summary essay of the doctoral thesis Sound Reading: Exploring and conceptualising audiobook practices among young adults (Tattersall Wallin, 2022b).