Parasocial interaction
Parasocial interaction (PSI) refers to a kind of psychological relationship experienced by an audience in their mediated encounters with performers in the mass media, particularly on television and online platforms.
When it is applied in the use-and-gratifications (U&G) approaches, the two concepts are typically treated interchangeably, with regard primarily to a special type of "interpersonal involvement" with media figures that includes different phenomena such as interaction and identification.
[18][20] However, Dibble et al. (2016) found evidence supporting their hypothesis that the newer EPSI-Scale was a better measure of PSIs and that the traditional scale merely revealed participants' liking of characters.
[14][31][32][33][34] For example, academic John Turner adopted the idea of homophily (i.e., the tendency for friendships to form between people that are alike in some designated respect) to examine the interpersonal and psychological predictors of parasocial interaction with television performers.
Current PSI literature commonly acknowledge that the psychological processes acting at the individual level parallel those used in ordinary social activity and relationship building.
It seems that perceived similarities increase children's interest and investment in the characters, which motivates the development of parasocial relationships and helps improve later screen-based learning.
Eyal and Cohen, who examined responses to the end of the television series Friends, define parasocial breakup as "a situation where a character with whom a viewer has developed a PSR goes off the air".
While the study focused on parasocial breakups as a result of the writers' strike from 2007 to 2008, the researchers found that media consumers still experienced different levels of emotional distress.
Webmasters might foster parasocial interactions through a conversational writing style, extensive character development and opportunities for email exchange with the website's persona.
[64][3] As Internet users become more active on social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter, followers often feel more engaged with them, making the parasocial relationships stronger.
Philip Drake and Andy Miah argue that the Internet, and therefore social networks and blogs, downsize the gatekeeping processes that exist in other mass media forms.
Twitch livestreams create a digital "third place", a term coined by Ray Oldenburg that describes a public and informal get-together of individuals that are foundational to building a community.
[86] The Guardian also highlighted the interactive nature of Twitch and that the "format is extremely good at cultivating a relationship among community, establishing itself as a virtual hangout spot for its millions of teenage and college-age users".
[89][87] Jesselyn Cook, for HuffPost, wrote that "most all women who earn a living on Twitch know what it's like to have male viewers who, after spending countless hours watching them in real time, develop obsessive feelings of romantic and sexual entitlement.
[97] Certain social media users, called influencers, are active creators of online content, such as personal experiences, ideas, or reviews for targeted audiences.
[15] Influencers on the social media platforms often comment on the products they have tested, and promote them online to other users by providing their feelings and personal experiences along with images and videos.
Thus, many social commerce merchants utilize this psychological implication, and propagate beautiful images and positive comments on products to provide users a more intuitive shopping experience.
[109] In a 2014 journal article, Seung-A Annie Jin and Joe Phua discussed how they conducted studies to determine multiple hypotheses based on the number of followers a celebrity had in correlation to the trust that imparted onto a consumer.
[112] In a 2023 study involving the quick serving restaurant (QSR) industry, Banerjee, Sen, and Zahay find that customers’ in-store engagement in the form of their social media usage can have strong predictive power.
The authors find that social media posts containing product brand mentions created by an engaged customer within a store premise can trigger parasocial interactions in the form of likes, retweets, and replies which can further lead to an increased competitive spillover.
[122][123] These prototypical reality shows are built around narratives, displaying a lot of emotions which seem to solicit empathy and identification, and also demonstrating the characters' skills towards developing fandom.
[124] Different social media platforms provide channels through which celebrities communicate with their followers easily, making parasocial interaction/relationships seem less unidirectional and perhaps more satisfying and intense.
The role that mediated communication and engagement played during the pandemic may have led to media personas being evaluated with similar (or the same) cognitive processes we use when interacting with real-life friends.
[2] Horton and Wohl have stated that television personas offer the media user a sense of intimacy and have influence over them by using their appearance and gesture in a way that is seen as being engaging, directly addressing the audience, and conversing with them in a friendly and personal manner.
Media users know that the chances of receiving a direct message or getting a retweet from a celebrity are highly unlikely, but the possibility gives fans a sense of intimacy and adds authenticity to one-sided parasocial relationships with their favorite personas.
This accumulation of time and knowledge acquired of the media persona translates into feelings of loyalty,[126] which can then influence their attitudes, voting decisions, prejudices, change their ideas about reality, willingness to donate, and purchasing advertised products.
[131] Due to the span and breadth of media franchises such as the Harry Potter, Disney, and Star Wars series, consumers are able to engage more deeply and form strong parasocial relationships.
[131] Mina Tsay and Brianna Bodine developed a revised version of Rubin's scale by addressing that parasocial relationship engagement is dictated by a media users personality and motivations.
One study found that individuals in a certain identity domain who lacked friends in real life made up for this deficiency by forming intense parasocial relationships[138] (Bond, 2018), supporting this hypothesis.
When utilizing these mediated communications, users can perceive greater distance (as compared to real-life interactions), leading them to cognitively process their actual friends in a similar manner as liked media persona.
