Date of Award

12-1-2001

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Arts (MA)

Department

Communication

Abstract

This paper discusses the popular U.S. cartoun-sitcom The Simpsons and the vast global audience the show has reached in its 12 years on air. First, it clarifies the message the creator, Matt Groening, and the writers are conveying: a left wing American ideology. This message is sent to a variety of communities around the globe. To understand ihe relationship between the show as a media text and its audience, it needs to be studied in terms of transnational interpretive communities. Studying the audience as transnational, allows all communities, on a large and a small-scale, to be analyzed. By using the concept of interpretive communities to discover how several existing groups have interpreted the show, the paper then explores an established Internet community, alt.tv.simpsons. The newsgroup is compared and contrasted to the fundamentals of interpretive communities established earlier in the paper. The paper concludes by stating that when interpreting a media text, a transnational Internet community uses a hybridization process. Further discussion about the relatively new concept of online culture, and other Simpsons Internet groups in particular, is suggested for further research.

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