Children’s embodied repertoires when engaging with fiction
Citation
Supa, M., Kuzmičová, A., & Nekola, M. (2025). Children’s embodied repertoires when engaging with fiction: Mixed-methods insights from Czechia. Journal of Children and Media, 1–22.
https://doi.org/10.1080/17482798.2025.2559246
Our first WONDRE article has been published in the Journal of Children and Media. The study explores how children experience fictional stories across media in bodily as well as mental ways.
Abstract
Considerable attention has been paid to the role of fictional stories in children’s lives. However, children are rarely asked how they as whole embodied persons navigate their unique repertoires of media practices. In this mixed-methods Q methodology study, 28 children (ages 9-12) were invited to numerically sort picture cards depicting different fiction-related practices (e.g. reading, watching, creating) and body positions/situations (e.g. lying down, tucked in/away) based on subjective enjoyment. They were subsequently interviewed about their sorting decisions. Statistical analysis of the sorts was performed alongside thematic analysis of the post-sorting interviews. Four repertoires of fiction-related embodied practices emerged, corresponding to four distinct participant groups: (1) story following and backgrounded body, (2) story side-lining and hedonic body, (3) story owning and responsive body, and (4) story making and moving body. These repertoires demonstrate that children vary widely in embodied practices and their subjective meanings, as well as in the degree to which they are affected by societal expectations. These individual differences add nuance to pervasive notions of children’s lives with fiction that presume, e.g. that every child enjoys experiencing fiction across multiple modes, or even indiscriminately enjoys fictional stories in general.
