Johan Signell

The Importance of Tactility for Tomorrow´s Newspaper

Abstract

Why do we read the newspaper? A digital news platform offers a lot more than its physical ditto. The possibilities of hyper linking, indexed searching and user interaction are just a few of its, for the consumer, added values. Besides, it’s cheaper, often even for free. 

Then why do we still read the newspaper? Could it be just the feeling of holding it in your hand that makes us want to hold on to this classic media?

To find the answer to these questions, the stakeholders of the production chain have been interviewed and the results have been compared to its counter parts. The standpoints and forecasts of the publishing houses and of the end consumers were analyzed given the latest research in human reading behaviour.

The results of this qualitative study show that tactility definitely presents an added value for the end consumer. All of the interviewees along the production chain regarded the feeling of paper in your hand to be the primary reason to continue consuming printed press whilst the second group of interviewees, the possible future subscribers, did not express the same level commitment to the tactility of the newspapers. In other words, the added value of tactility is found to be tradition bound. 

Key Words:

• ♣ Tactility
• ♣ Newspaper
• ♣ Added value
• ♣ Dagens Nyheter