Mass Communication and Para-Social Interaction

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

Type

Journal article

Intellectual base

Primary research

Year

1956

DOI

10.1080/00332747.1956.11023049

DOI registrant

Taylor & Francis

Link

https://doi.org/10.1080/00332747.1956.11023049

Cited by

1 citation across 1 artifact.

Each citation links to the sentence it supports in the citing article.

Domain-specific

• Parasocial Interaction
  • Horton and Wohl introduced the concept in 1956 to explain why television audiences responded to on-screen personalities as though to actual acquaintances: viewers remembered the host's family stories, felt pleased at the host's successes, felt personally let down by missteps, and experienced something resembling grief when a beloved figure died or a show ended.

    This sourceHorton and Wohl's account of the new media personae, and of the staging that duplicates an informal face-to-face gathering to produce the 'simulacrum of conversational give and take' they call para-social interaction. Horton and Wohl's proposal to call the seeming face-to-face spectator-performer relation a para-social relationship, and their statement that the interaction is characteristically one-sided and not susceptible of mutual development.

    Supported in partVerified against a saved copy of the source

    “They “know” such a persona in somewhat the same way they know their chosen friends”

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