In 1956, Horton and Wohl published a seminal paper on parasocial interaction.  Parasocial interaction is the illusion of a real life, face-to-face, reciprocal relationship with someone you’ve seen in the media but don’t actually know, such as a performer like Justin Bieber.  This is not a psychological aberration.  The evolution and ubiquity of Internet access, social networking sites, smartphones, YouTube channels, and the rawness of Twitter provide channels of continual exposure to celebrities that can easily create illusions of intimacy.

Biologically, the sense of ‘ knowing’ a celebrity personally makes sense.  Media technologies take social cues, such as facial close-ups, eye contact, gestures, and emotions and amplify it all, literally in terms of size and psychologically, in terms of immersive frequency, compelling stories, and pulse-quickening music.  The sense of a personal relationship is reinforced by the reliability of these objects of affection.  We can really count on them because they show up everywhere and this intimacy and reliability build a framework to which we can add our own brand of fantasies.

For adolescent girls, crushes on celebrities can even be seen as a rite of passage.  They provide an experience of love and the fantasy of what a love relationship might be like. Parasocial attachment is not restricted to the young, however.  It can provide an outlet for romantic imagination as well as a sense of community and social validation when fans join together.

But the defining feature of a parasocial idol is that they are exactly what the admiring fan needs them to be: perfect.

Parasocial Interaction on the Internet

Though most literature has focused on parasocial interaction as a television and film phenomenon, new technologies, namely the Internet, have necessitated a closer look at such interactions.

In 1998, John Eighmey, from Iowa State University, and Lola McCord, from the University of Alabama, published a study titled “Adding Value in the Information Age: Uses and Gratifications of Sites on the World Wide Web.” ^[5] In the study, they observed that the presence of parasocial relationships constituted an important determinant of website visitation rates. “It appears,” the study states, “that websites projecting a strong sense of personality may also encourage the development of a kind of parasocial relationship with website visitors.”

PSI web scale A measure of consumer parasocial interaction with websites.

“Scaling the Web: A Parasocial Interaction Scale for World Wide Web Sites”

Adapted from the Parasocial Interaction (PSI) scale, (Rubin, Perse & Powell, 1985) to assess parasocial interactions specifically on the Internet. They used the scale to gauge participants’ reactions to a number of different websites, and, more generally, to determine whether or not parasocial interaction theory could be linked to Internet use. The study concluded, first, that parasocial interaction is not dependent on the presence of a traditional persona on a website; data showed that websites with described “strong personae” did not attract significantly more hits than other websites selected by the study conductors. “The literal, mediated personality from the newscast or soap opera of the past [around which the original PSI-scale was framed] is gone. The design metaphor, flow of the web experience, and styles of textual and graphic presentations of the information all become elements of a website persona and encourage parasocial interaction by the visitor/user with that persona.”

(Hoerner, 1999) proposed a method for measuring the effects of parasocial interaction on the Internet. The study explained that websites may feature “personae” that host to the visitors to the sites in order to generate public interest.

Personae

• The online representations of the actual people, often prominent public figures, but sometimes, according to the study, will be the fictional creations of the sites’ webmasters .
• Personae “take on many of the characteristics of a [real-life] companion, including regular and frequent appearances, a sense of immediacy…and the feeling of a face-to-face meeting.”
• Parasocial relationships may still develop in the absence of personae.
• Webmasters might foster parasocial interactions through a conversational writing style, extensive character development and opportunities for email exchange with the website’s persona.

 

 

 

 

Horton, D., & Wohl, R. R. (1956). Mass Communication and Para-Social Interaction. Psychiatry, 19, 215-219.