Digital narratives are transforming how young readers engage with stories. Interactive picture books, transmedia storytelling, immersive experiences, and AI-mediated collaborative creation are reshaping the ways stories are read, experienced, and shared. This goes beyond a simple proliferation of technological formats; it represents a cultural shift that is reconfiguring both narrative forms and the reader’s role  within the reading experience.

As Marshall McLuhan observed, new media never simply supplement older ones, nor do they leave them unchanged—they continuously reshape their forms and positions. Today, digital and multimedia are not replacing the traditional book but redefining its role, distributing the reading experience across new languages and practices. In this landscape, the question is not whether the digital has entered the terrain of children’s and young people’s storytelling—its presence is already established—but how its development is taking shape, and under which logics it is being guided.

What does it mean to read a story in digital environments? What forms do digital narratives take? How do they engage the reader, through participation, exploration, and co-creation? And what criteria allow us to recognise quality beyond technical innovation or the mere appeal of interactivity?

© Serena Viola, 2026

Pier Cesare Rivoltella

Professor of Didactics and Special Education at the Department of the Arts, University of Bologna. His research interests focus on media literacy, educational technologies, and didactic research, with particular attention to the relationships between media, education, and training. He is Director of the Master’s programme MED. Media, Education and Didactics for Digital Innovation and has coordinated numerous national and international research projects. He is President of SIREF (Italian Society for Educational and Training Research), serves as editor and co-editor of several academic journals and book series in the field of pedagogy, and is the author of numerous influential volumes on didactics and media education.

Jennifer Rowsell

Jennifer Rowsell, PhD, is an internationally recognised scholar of literacy and multimodality, with over 25 years of academic and research experience across universities in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom. She has held senior leadership roles, including Tier 2 Canada Research Chair at Brock University, Deputy Head of School at the University of Bristol, and Director of Research and Innovation at the University of Sheffield. Her work has been instrumental in expanding literacy beyond print to include images, objects, spaces, and digital media, positioning multimodality as a central concept in contemporary literacy studies. She is known for her collaboration with Kate Pahl and their concept of artifactual literacies, which shows how personal objects and artifacts reveal what and how people learn, as well as for her widely cited books and handbooks on multimodality and digital literacy. Working in classrooms and communities, Rowsell has explored how identity, culture, and place inform reading, writing, and meaning-making, and she designs research-informed practices that help educators value diverse forms of expression—video, design, movement, and more. She served as Lead Editor of Reading Research Quarterly from 2022 to 2026 and is a founding editor of the Routledge Expanding Literacies in Education book series. She is also a member of the board of the European Literacy Policy Network. 

Tiziana Mascia

PhD, teaches Children’s Literature and literacies at the University of Urbino Carlo Bo (DISTUM Department of Humanities). Her research develops within the field of children’s literature and literacy studies and focuses on the sociocultural dimensions of reading experiences, nonfiction, and digital narratives for children and young people. Her academic publications includes monographs, peer-reviewed journal articles, and contributions to edited volumes, as well as participation in national and European research projects and collaboration with international research networks and institutions. She is the founder of Literacy Italia, an association dedicated to fostering dialogue between research, schools, and teacher education in the field of literacy and children’s and young adult narratives, affiliated with the Federation of European Literacy Associations (FELA) and the International Literacy Association (ILA). She is a member of the board of the European Literacy Policy Network (ELINET).

Ugo Guidolin

Teaches Cultural Anthropology of Digital Media, Information Design, and Digital Visualization and coordinates the Media and Digital Design Lab at IUSVE University (Venice and Verona). His work focuses on media education and digital literacy, areas in which he has led workshops and seminars. He is a member of the executive board of Literacy Italia and contributed to the policy document Digital Technologies and Children: Guidelines for Responsible Use (CSB Onlus, 2015). He has taken part in IUSVE research projects, including Educators and New Media (2017) and Growing Digital (2020). He is the author of the essay Thinking Digitally (McGraw-Hill, 2005) and of the cyber-narrative for young readers Sybo, My Stratospheric Friend (Edizioni Paoline, 2010).