Examining Four Processes of Audience Involvement With Media Personae: Transportation, Parasocial Interaction, Identification, and Worship

2015/03/30 by William J. Brown · 11 citations
Arts and Humanities · Social Sciences · #Media Influence and Health #Media Studies and Communication #Media, Gender, and Advertising

paper · doi:10.1111/comt.12053

openalex publication_date 2015/03/30 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/26

Abstract

The proliferation of visual media worldwide during the past 50 years has made mediated personalities, both real people and fictional characters, powerful agents of social change. Communication theorists have explored various forms of involvement with these personalities, generally referred to as media personae. The current academic literature that explores various forms of audience involvement with media personae lacks conceptual clarity. The present article discusses distinctions among four processes of involvement—transportation, parasocial interaction, identification, and worship—and provides an integrated theoretical model for assessing these powerful forms of social influence.

Citations

• When Good Friends Say Goodbye: A Parasocial Breakup Study
• Compliance, identification, and internalization three processes of attitude change
• Conceptualization and measurement of celebrity worship
• The role of transportation in the persuasiveness of public narratives.

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Related

• Understanding Media Enjoyment: The Role of Transportation Into Narrative Worlds
• Amassing the Multitude: Revisiting Early Audience Studies
• Social Media Influencers and Followers: Theorization of a Trans-Parasocial Relation and Explication of Its Implications for Influencer Advertising
• Rethinking affective publics as media rituals through temporality, performativity and liminality
• Exploring Everyday Media Use: Viewing Motives, Multitasking, and Viewing Duration as Potential Drivers of Parasocial Interactions and Relationships