The pleasure of reading digital narrative fiction
resides in our sense of being immersed in a fictional
universe populated by life-like characters, and where
situations and events unfold in a plot allowing us to
reenact the vicissitudes of the story in our minds as
we read. What happens to this sense of immersion when
the narrative consists of animated, interactive,
multimodal text, is displayed on a computer screen,
and when we click on hyperlinks and scroll with a
computer mouse, instead of leafing through the pages
of a print book while reading unyielding text on
paper? This study explores the impact of technical
and material features of the reading device - the
computer and the print book - on our sense of being
emotionally, cognitively, and phenomenologically
immersed in a narrative fiction. Far from being
transparent displays of narratives, the medium and
technology in question play a crucial role for our
reading experience.
resides in our sense of being immersed in a fictional
universe populated by life-like characters, and where
situations and events unfold in a plot allowing us to
reenact the vicissitudes of the story in our minds as
we read. What happens to this sense of immersion when
the narrative consists of animated, interactive,
multimodal text, is displayed on a computer screen,
and when we click on hyperlinks and scroll with a
computer mouse, instead of leafing through the pages
of a print book while reading unyielding text on
paper? This study explores the impact of technical
and material features of the reading device - the
computer and the print book - on our sense of being
emotionally, cognitively, and phenomenologically
immersed in a narrative fiction. Far from being
transparent displays of narratives, the medium and
technology in question play a crucial role for our
reading experience.