Abstract
M.A.
One of the fundamental dialogues in the media industry currently concerns the future of print fashion magazines in the digital era. Recent studies indicate that digital media is a considerable competitor to print fashion magazines. In industrialized nations, digital natives are believed to be leaning towards digital media platforms for accessing information. The digital native generation consists of individuals who were born and raised in the digital age. Digital natives are at ease with computers and technology in general from an early age and believe that technology is a basic and essential part of their existence. Despite digital natives in industrialized nations being acknowledged to prefer digital media, there is a lack of evidence from the perspective of emerging nations relating to whether digital natives in emerging nations prefer print or digital fashion magazines. Therefore, this study aimed to explore the relevance of print fashion magazines to the digital native generation. A qualitative research approach was used to collect data for the study. The qualitative data was collected through semi-structured interviews with digital natives. The one-on-one interviews were held with ten participants who belong to the digital native generation and they were selected using the purposive sampling method. This study’s participants were students from two major institutions of higher education in Johannesburg. Participants had to be between the ages of 18 to 25 years and they had to know the difference between print and digital fashion magazines. Furthermore, participants had to be consumers of fashion magazines or at least have had consumed fashion magazines before and they had to be familiar with digital media. The study analyzed the data using the thematic method of data analysis. This study’s interview findings indicated that the majority of digital natives prefer to consume fashion magazines from a digital media platform. Half of the digital natives who were interviewed indicated their preference for digital fashion magazines. The participants prefer digital media platforms for convenience, timelessness, and easy access. They further prefer digital fashion magazines for issues relating to cost, they believe that digital fashion magazines are available to them at no cost. However, as..