Parasocial Interaction: A Review of the Literature and a Model for Future Research

This paper considers the phenomenon of parasocial interaction (PSI) used by media researchers to describe the relationship between media users and media figures (from celebrities to fictional characters). Although the concept has been used consistently across the past two decades in media research, it is argued here that it has not been sufficiently developed at a theoretical level to be taken up by psychologists. A number of key issues have not been addressed: firstly, how PSI might, as its originators put it, be "integrated into the matrix of usual social activity" (Horton & Wohl, 1956); secondly, how PSI might vary according to different types of media figure; and thirdly, what processes over time and media…