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AbstractArtificial intelligence (AI) assistants, or chatbots, have become widely used on several retailers' websites. Effective interaction and communication with AI chatbots can deliver a better consumer experience by assisting with decision‐making, ultimately supporting purchase intentions. Based on parasocial theory, this study focuses on how interactions with AI shopping chatbots impact consumers' perceptions of communication quality, satisfaction, and continuance usage intentions. Partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS‐SEM) was employed to assess the proposed research model using data from 184 Korean middle‐aged women who shop online. Participants completed the shopping process with the assistance of an AI shopping chatbot and responded to survey items about their experiences. In particular, the findings reveal the structural process whereby a consumer's parasocial relationship with an AI shopping chatbot ultimately increases continuance usage intentions through perceived communication quality and satisfaction. The results indicate that a parasocial relationship positively influences communication quality with the chatbot, which in turn increases satisfaction and continuance usage intentions. These findings provide marketers with theoretical and practical guidance for enhancing consumer experiences in the online shopping environment.

Audience activity in the media transaction may function to promote or to deter media effects. Facilitative activity includes selectivity, attention, and involvement. Inhibitory activity includes avoidance, distraction, and skepticism. The authors expected instrumental media motivation, selectivity, attention, and involvement to be positive predictors of satisfaction, parasocial interaction, and cultivation effects from watching daytime television serials. They expected avoidance, distraction, and skepticism to be negative predictors of those effects. Three path analyses largely supported their expectations. The authors observed direct links between instrumental motivation and media effects, and indirect links that operated through audience activity. Such variations in audience activity help explain how and why people respond differently to media messages.

Copresence, the idea that the presence of other actors shapes individual behavior, links macro- and micro-theorizing about social interaction. Traditionally, scholars have focused on the physical proximity of other people, assuming copresence to be a given, objective condition. However, recent empirical evidence on technologically mediated (e.g., e-mail), imaginary (e.g., prayer), and parasocial (e.g., watching a television show) interactions challenges classic copresence assumptions. In this article we reconceptualize copresence to provide theoretical building blocks (definitions, assumptions, and propositions) for a revitalized research program that allows for the explicit assessment of copresence as an endogenous, subjective variable dynamically related to social context. We treat copresence as the degree to which an actor perceives mutual entrainment (i.e., synchronization of attention, emotion, and behavior) with another actor. We demonstrate the ramifications of this reconceptualization for classic theorizing on micro-macro linkages and contemporary research questions, including methodological artifacts in laboratory research and disparities in patient-provider rapport.

Abstract

Purpose
Live streaming has become an increasingly popular media, which allows individuals to record and broadcast simultaneously on the internet. Streamers, individuals who conduct live streaming videos, create diverse media content on live streaming video platforms. Most streamers show up with their real-person appearances via live streaming. However, Virtual YouTubers, known as VTubers, use avatars to conduct live streaming. In recent years, Twitch has become one of the most well-known video live streaming services for VTubers. This study aims to explore attractiveness between the viewer and VTuber through parasocial interactions, and the influence that attractiveness might have on actual mediated interactions between viewers and the VTuber.


Design/methodology/approach
A questionnaire was conducted to study the attractiveness of VTubers' live streaming and viewers' engagement with VTubers.


Findings
Parasocial interactions can be a factor drawing viewers to watch VTubers' live streaming. Physical attractiveness, social attractiveness, and task attractiveness play important roles in influencing viewers' choices on specific VTuber's live streaming and further social interactions with them. To be more specific, the interactions with VTubers, the content of live streaming, the personality of VTubers, and the visual design of the VTubers' avatars are important factors that attract respondents to watch live streaming. Additionally, the findings show the pattern of viewers' interactions with VTubers. Active viewers typically leave comments to be acknowledged by VTubers and further reactions. Passive viewers are influenced by time, language barrier, character, and emotional health.


Practical implications
VTubers and the platform are given suggestions on how to design and improve live streams and help VTubers to promote to attract viewers.


Social implications
It introduces VTubing as a subculture and shows how viewers consume VTubers' live streaming.


Originality/value
This is the first study to explore the roles of attractiveness on viewers selecting and engaging with VTubers' live streaming. It illustrates the importance of companionship, avatars, and the personality of VTubers in influencing viewers' willingness to watch live streaming.

This study uses media system dependency theory to review and expand an individual media dependency (IMD) model for television home shopping. The model is extended to account for audience-viewer effects as measured by a newly developed Broadcast Teleparticipation Effects Scale. Viewer relationships with the medium, the genre within the medium, and the genre personae (via parasocial interaction and broadcast teleparticipation effects) are associated with viewing behavior and are highly predictive of purchasing behavior. The act of purchasing serves to reinforce dependencies with the programming, resulting in feedback effects of increasing intensity of persona relationships, exposure, and ultimately, future purchasing. A generic causal model for IMD is proposed, societal implications are discussed, and further investigations are suggested.

This study explores the relationship between social media influencers (SMIs) and followers' engagement, social attractiveness, and establishing brand loyalty. The study seeks to redefine current theoretical frameworks and provide practical insights for marketers by investigating the mediating role of followers' engagement (FE) and social attractiveness (SA) and the moderating influence of parasocial interactions. The present study utilized a quantitative research methodology. The researchers employed the Smart PLS 4 structural equation modeling (SEM) technique to analyze the data. The data was obtained from the participants using the convenience sampling technique. This study's findings reveal that the sole influence of social media influencers' homophily on brand loyalty was insignificant; the presence of a substantial mediator, namely consumer engagement, suggests that engagement plays a role in channeling the impact of homophily on brand loyalty. Furthermore, the SA played a crucial role in mediating, emphasizing the significance of aesthetic and emotional appeal. The study revealed that parasocial relationships did not have a significant moderating effect on FE. However, they significantly modified the association between SMIs' homophily and brand loyalty. These study findings highlight that marketers operating within the laptop industry specifically utilize engagement activities, emphasize visual harmony, and foster parasocial relationships to maximize the influence of influencers on brand loyalty.

Since childhood, we, as human beings, are taught to look to others for signals and indications about how to live our lives. It is an innate human desire to evaluate, assess, and improve our skills based on what everyone else leads us to perceive is right or ideal. Such comparison is a necessary facet to social order- we compare political leaders, stocks, investments, property, ect. in order to determine what choice will lead to the best outcome. However, leaping into the abyss of comparison is not always one worth taking. With the recent exponential growth of technology, social comparison is at an ultimate high- not only between rival companies, but also due to social media, between everyday people. Although some may say that social media fosters healthy relationships between individuals, I am arguing that advertisement and the misrepresentation of oneself on social media affects both body image and mental health, suggesting that as a society we need to reassess the value we place on social networking sites (SNSs). Through examining multiple studies, observations, hypotheses, and analyses, I will demonstrate that social media, particularly Facebook and Instagram, can quickly change a robust community of online interaction to a place of frustration and despair. An essential prerequisite to my argument is grasping a two key terms: Social Comparison Tendency, also referred to as SCO, and parasocial interaction, or PSI. Social Comparison Tendency (SCO) is an individual difference variable referring to how we define our personal and social worth based on self-comparison to others.1 Parasocial interaction (PSI) can be defined as "the illusion of a face-to-face relationship with a media performer."2 Ultimately , in this paper, I will be taking an psychoanalysis and theoretical approach to describe the notion of social comparison in women through: (1) providing a framework for social media consumption patterns, (2) examining both the advertiser's role and the individual's role in social media, (3) exploring the adverse psychological outcomes of social media use, and (4) determining what that means for society.

Two studies investigated (a) how public figures' interaction with their followers on social network sites (SNS) affects individuals' impressions about and attitudes toward them, and (b) how individuals' interpersonal orientation moderates such effects, if any. In Study 1, participants viewed either a famous actor's Twitter page or a news article merely relaying his Tweets. Exposure to the Twitter page (vs. news article) induced stronger feelings of actual conversation (i.e., social presence) among less affiliative individuals, whereas the reverse was true for more socially proactive ones. Social presence, in turn, facilitated parasocial interaction with the target and heightened the participants' willingness to watch his movie, with limited effects on their overall evaluation of the target. Study 2, which employed a lesser known local politician using a different microblogging service, replicated the advantage of SNS communication over the news article for socially reserved individuals, with no corresponding effect for more affiliative ones.

This article explores the lone consumer experience in the context of speciality coffee, resulting in the conceptualisation of the lone consumer servicescape. The lone consumer is conceptualised as a consumption collective, with its own innate characteristics, behaviours and requirements that can be viewed through physical, social and symbolic aspects of servicescape. Through utilising freewriting, the research captures self-reported experiences of lone consumers of speciality coffee. Data derived from 54 respondents is analysed thematically to determine the dimensions of lone consumption. Findings reveal a lone consumption servicescape that combines spatiality, materiality and aesthetic, symbolic discourse and parasocial interactions, mediated by the lone consumer's self-reflection. Lone consumption, in this context, is acknowledged as a sought after and fulfilling experience but one which requires both a conducive environment and self-awareness to utilise it.

Richard Dyer's Stars and general studies analyze the unusual phenomena surrounding influential film stars and their unmitigated power to compel and amaze those outside of the spotlight. His studies separate the theory into three intermingling parts: stars as a social phenomenon, stars as images, and stars as signs. There are many components in Dyer's studies that can be extracted and used in analyses of particular actors and actresses. However, this does not solely revolve around film stars. In this analysis, I will be examining the famous pop music icon and recent actress, Lady Gaga. Through an analysis of her style, consumption, social interaction, and many personas, I will be expanding on Dyer's theory of celebrity/stardom and Horton's and Wohl's theory of parasocial interaction and relationships. My goal is to show, through her experiences and transformations, the inner-workings of stardom, and the pressure it places not only on the stars themselves, but also on the public, who look for advice and attention from those they place on pedestals.

Does intense engagement with entertainment media programs and characters reflect a psychological need for companionship? The research findings to date have been equivocal. The present study investigates how parasocial interaction (PSI) with media characters and transportation into media programs are related to specific kinds of solitude experiences, as well as to the need to belong (NTB). Results of a questionnaire study (N = 301) show that solitude experienced as self-expansion (e.g., self-discovery), diversion (e.g., engaging in distracting activities), and Other orientation (e.g., loneliness) each contribute to increased PSI with favorite TV characters. Self-expansion and Other-oriented solitude each also predicts increased tendency to transport into media programs and identify with characters. Furthermore, Other-oriented solitude appears to account for the significant association between NTB and PSI. Results provide new evidence for both compensatory and complementary uses and gratifications of entertainment media.

Recent Trends in European Media Psychology -- Media Appreciation and Use -- An Audience-Based Approach to Assessing Programme Quality -- Parasocial Interaction with People on the Screen -- Changing Audiences for Changing Media: A Social Psychological Perspective -- The Contribution of Media Psychology to User-Friendly Computers: A Proposal for Cooperative Work -- Aggressive and Emotional Reactions -- Effects of Extremely Violent Audiovisual Products on Young People's Aggressive Behavior and Emotional Reactions -- Violence in TV News: The Cultivation of Emotions -- Psychophysiological Methods in Media Research -- The Socio-Emotional Dimension of Using Screen Media. Current Perspectives in German Media Psychology -- Language Acquisition and School Performance -- Could Enjoying a Movie Lead to Language Acquisition? -- The English Language Within the Media Worlds of European Youth -- The Impact of Background Media on Homework Performance: Students' Perceptions and Experimental Findings -- Contemplative Contributions -- Sovereignty and Citizenship: Realms of Schizoid Perception in Britain in Relation to Television's Mediation of Europe -- Les Effets Violents de la Television.

This study reports a quasi-experiment ( N= 374) that examined an underlying mechanism through which narratives can facilitate personalization of risk. The participants were exposed to one of four entertainment clips depicting an at-risk character who either tested positive or negative for sexually transmitted diseases (STDs). As predicted, reduction of perceived social distance to an at-risk character resulted in a convergence of perceived self- and character-risk. More importantly, the convergence of risk was driven by an increased perception of self-risk, as opposed to a reduction of character-risk. The observed pattern of risk convergence was much more pronounced in the negative rather than the positive STD test narratives. Furthermore, narrative engagement through identification, parasocial interaction, and perceived realism led to a greater degree of risk convergence, which was mediated by reduction in perceived social distance. The order in which the subjects estimated self- and character-risk did not influence the perceptual gap.

Focusing on the often neglected individual modes of consumption and ascriptions of meaning, I propose a theoretical and conceptual framework for the analysis of the diversity of the use and appropriation of the boys' love (BL) genre. Within the framework of theories of media gratification, I bring together key elements of BL fandom, such as playing with masculinities, and central concepts of entertainment research. To assess these concepts' appropriateness and to do justice to the transnational phenomenon that BL has become, I also consider qualitative interviews conducted in Japan and Germany. The gratifications sought and gained by BL fans (fujoshi and fudanshi, rotten girls and boys) vary, including the physiological (arousal), the social (exchange, belonging), the cognitive (parasocial interaction), and the aesthetic (immersion). My empirical findings highlight the diversity of BL use, while my conceptual framework additionally works as a reference for a comparison of these use patterns and other media preferences as well as global trends of media consumption. (ORCID: 0000-0002-8585-9177)

In times of increasing individualism when many traditional socialization institutions lose their primary role and influence, television series characters have become new role models that people can identify with. Modern television production is inclined to portray protagonists as antiheroes because viewers are more engaged and intrigued by them compared to the traditional protagonists. Series often break the so-called "fourth wall" in a way of transcending boundaries between virtual and real life, talking directly to the viewers, thus creating parasocial interaction. According to the transportation theory of persuasion, the greater the emotional bond with the characters, the higher the possibility for the viewers to "transport" within the narrative. This phenomenon can be particularly noticed in the political drama House of Cards, where the Machiavellian politician Frank Underwood persuades both characters in the story and the viewers in order to achieve some of his personal goals. The aim of this paper is to highlight the methods of persuasion and manipulation used by the protagonist in order to recognize how he wants to persuade us and recognize what his underlying goals are.