"The first book is never good when it comes to books" a qualitative study on boys reading in the media society

Children of today are surrounded by many different kinds of media. Books have to compete with new media like computers, video games, many TV-channels etc. The aim of this study has been to investigate the reading habits of 9-12-year old boys in their spare time, and their reasons for reading related to their use of other media. Our interest has been to shed light on the boys reading habits, their preferences and motives for reading and their reading functions. Even though our focus has been on their reading, we also have examined their use of other media and the function of this use. Our method has been qualitative interviews. We have interviewed twelve boys, two by two, during their leisure time. As conceptual frameworks we have used the theories of "SKRIN-projektet", and theories by Møhl and Schack and Feilitzen. Our results show that there is a wide span among the boys, both when it comes to reading and other media use. Almost every one of the boys enjoys reading and can tell us about at least one favourite book. The main reason both for reading and for using other media in their spare time is entertainment. Another common motive is information. Some of the boys have special interests that they want to learn more about, and in these cases the reading or other media use can give both entertainment and information. Social motives are more common for other media use than in reading books. On the other hand, when reading books, the boys seem to identify themselves more on a personal level with the characters. We have found that use of other media sometimes can inspire the boys to read books and, we cant find any implications that books are going to be outclassed by other media.Uppsatsnivå: