The Physical Experience of Magazines as Media Objects

London.
The next speaker at Transforming Audiences is Brita Ytra-Arne, who compares the experience of reading print and online magazines (focussing here especially on womens' magazines in Sweden). Interestingly, Brita's research subjects, established readers of print magazines who nonetheless were also capable Internet users, strongly preferred using print magazines.

This was due only in small part to differences in content, however. A better explanation is provided by considerations of context: media use formed part of everyday life for these people, but the technological context of reading online magazines recalled a feeling of work rather than leisure, and such reading - even where laptops were available - was seen as uncomfortable and impractical. This may well be different for different groups of users, however, Brita stresses. Additionally, the content presentation of Web media was seen as inappropriate: clicking, scrolling, navigating was not seen as preferable to turning the pages of a magazine.

Several informants made connections between the quality and the physical properties of the media object, then; this was true also for distinctions between different print magazines, in fact: magazines with a 'proper' spine binding were preferred to staple-bound magazines, for example. The wider range of material, and the searchability available in Web magazines were not found to make up for their perceived shortcomings, by contrast. This is a question of the physical, bodily, sensual experiences offered by different media forms and objects, then.

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