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Abstract
Convergence, as broadly defined and applied as the term is, has ushered in countless ideas and debates concerning audiences, producers, their roles, and their relationships. Scholars, bloggers, and other authors in the utopian and dystopian camps have been debating about issues surrounding this relationship, with utopians largely focusing on its emancipatory manifestations and the blurring distinction between audiences and producers while dystopians have largely focused on convergences exploitative, limiting manifestations and the disproportionate reliance of the average consumer on large, corporate entities. This project sets out to compare the treatment of football games on television networks and online message boards in order to gain insight into the dynamics of the relationship between the members of the online community and the producers of the programming. An adaptation of Bakhtins dialogism suggests a middle ground between the two contrasting positions.