Readings in one click: consumption and reading practices of digital books

This research focuses on the consumption and reading practices of ebooks and audiobooks by university students, exploring questions related to what is read, how and when it is read, habits, motivations, and purposes. The general objective is to understand, based on consumption, how the reading practices of digital books are configured among university students. The specific objectives are as follows: a) explain the changes in reading habits attributed to the digital revolution; b) understand the characteristics of the current book reader; c) reflect on how the purpose of reading influences consumption, format, and reading support; d) analyze the reading motivations of university students; e) identify the rationalities of consumption embedded in these new reading practices.Therefore, the theoretical framework of the dissertation is linked to Latin American Cultural Studies that intertwine the concepts of Cultural Consumption, Reading Practices, and the Digital Revolution, drawing on the contributions of Canclini (1997, 2003, 2008, 2015, 2020), Chartier (1998, 2011), Santaella (2007, 2014), Thompson (2013, 2021, 2023), Winocur (2015), among others.The research design follows the discussions of Lopes (2010) and is divided into two phases: 1) Recognition, involving the study field, the construction of the state of the art, and an exploratory survey with two online questionnaires conducted in 2022 and 2023 focused on quantitative data; and 2) Immersion, operationalization of concepts and analytical categories through Reading Diaries based on the recording and collection technique of Miranda (2019), combined with semi-structured interviews involving seven students from the Federal University of Santa Maria.For the analysis of qualitative data, four categories were created: reader motivations, reading modes, reading consumption/access, and digital reading competence. Through the research, the presence of the six consumption rationalities created by Néstor García Canclini was observed, particularly economic, cultural, and aesthetic-symbolic rationalities. This is evident as digital book consumption is sought both for entertainment and study, with the former associated with purchases and the latter with free alternatives on the internet.