The IAFOR Journal of Arts and Humanities

Volume II – Issue I – Fall 2014

The IAFOR Journal of Arts and Humanities

Volume II – Issue I – Fall 2014

The IAFOR Journal of Arts and Humanities

Volume II – Issue I – Fall 2014

Although reading is popularly considered to be a solitary experience, in linguistics
and literature studies the social nature of reading has been widely recognized.
Accordingly, it is posited here that due to their inherently interactive and interpersonal
character, media texts cannot be related to other than intersubjectively. Based on data
gathered during research on teenage media reception, this article demonstrates that the
‘imagined communities’ (Anderson 1991) constructed in media discourse provoke in
readers a sense of belonging and sharing a specific identity, and that the trajectories of
readers’ emotional involvement also includes alienation from the textually constituted
communities. The same dynamic of coming closer and away concerns the recipients’
significant others to whom they relate intertextually in media discourse. In analyzing
these issues, this study shows the social and psychological complexity of media
consumption as well as the research value of exploring it for cultural and social
studies.

Keywords: identity, media, popular culture, symbolic communities, transdisciplinarity

Thomas French