Press Reading Habits at the University of Porto: focus group (2017)

What is it about?

The aim of this article is to ascertain the press reading habits of a meaningful group of students from the Faculty of Humanities from the University of Porto. The sample is made up of eight first-year Library and Information Science undergraduates students. For that reason, the focus group technique focused on observing the process of reading the same newspaper in two different formats: paper and digital in the following devices: laptop, cell phone, iPad, and Kindle e-reader. Calibre software was installed in the latter two devices to allow the students to read each newspaper in book format, thus avoiding advertising. The decoding process in each of the devices was discussed, analyzing the advantages and disadvantages of each one. In this way, the sample’s tendency was to read in paper format to ensure an appropriate comprehension of the content. But cell phones are still the most popular device.

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Why is it important?

This paper is a continuation of the research line of reading habits, but this time from the point of view of private discourses, something that was already approached in 2013 with Spanish students. A similar project will be done in Spain, in order to have an overall vision of reading in the Iberian Peninsula, observing its evolution throughout the years, and comparing one country with another.

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