Canadian magazine digital editions: affordances and engagement

Abstract

This paper is an analysis of print based Canadian consumer magazines, studying a selection of titles and their equivalent digital issues. It investigates how publishers are currently integrating a variety of digital platforms, and interactive approaches. These digital affordances are categorized as those that ‘extend’ the use of content, similar to navigation tools, such as searching for text within the issue, links to other articles, as well as the ability to learn more, or to save an article. Features used to ‘enhance’ the content include multimedia such as image slideshows, videos, and audio. Overall, the use of interactive elements in digital editorial content is relatively low, appearing in less than half of the issues. Video is leveraged in just over a third of these interactive examples. The use of interactivity affordances in advertisements is significantly lower. Publishers also support their digital and print editions by leveraging a variety of digital engagement tools. These include social media accounts for the magazine’s brand, as well as supporting the ability for their audience to share some level of content through social media. Other engagement tools such as the production of a digital newsletter, the availability of digital archives (back copies), editorial updates, commentary sections, and ‘email the editors’ are also investigated. These affordances and engagement approaches are compared with available circulation data in an effort to identify trends and patterns. This study forms a useful benchmark for how Canadian publishers are currently leveraging digital infrastructure. It highlights how publishers today may be focusing their efforts on specific devices and platforms, native apps for tablets and the iOS, while their readers and potential audience have shifted to mobile smartphones.