page_title: Parasocial interaction
section_title: Twitter
hierarchical_section_title: Parasocial interaction / In social media / Twitter
caption_attribution_description: English: Katy Perry at MTV Video Music Awards 2011.
context_page_description: Parasocial interaction refers to a kind of psychological relationship experienced by an audience in their mediated encounters with performers in the mass media, particularly on television. Viewers or listeners come to consider media personalities as friends, despite having limited interactions with them. PSI is described as an illusionary experience, such that media audiences interact with personas as if they are engaged in a reciprocal relationship with them. The term was coined by Donald Horton and Richard Wohl in 1956.
context_section_description: Twitter is one of the most popular social media platform and a good choice for celebrities who want to chat with their fans without divulging personal access information. In 2013, the analysis from Stever and Lawson assumed that Twitter can be used to learn about parasocial interaction and the study provided a first step in that endeavor. The study included a sample of 12 entertainment media celebrities, 6 males and 6 females, all taken from 2009–2012 Twitter feeds. The result showed that, although fans interacting with celebrities via Twitter have limited access to communicate with the celebrity, the relationship is still parasocial even though a fan might receive the occasional reply from the celebrity. Twitter can provide a direct connection between followers and celebrities or influencers that gives access to everyday information. It is an entertaining way for most fans since Twitter enables them to be a part of life that they enjoy.
  For example, In June 2019, Katy Perry served as the top most followed individual on Twitter for having over 108 million followers. The more followers one has on Twitter, the greater perceived social influence one has. This is particularly because tweets are broadcast to every follower, who may then retweet these posts to their own followers, which are then rebroadcast to thousands of other Twitter members (Schaefer 2012; Scott 2011). Seen as the equivalent to a movie earning a box-office hit or a single track hitting the top of the Billboard charts, the phenomenon of "trending" (i.e., words tagged at a higher rate than others on a social media platform) on Twitter grants users the ability to earn influence on the platform. Twitter, alongside other social media websites, can be utilized by its users as a form of gaining social capital.
  Social media networks inherit at least one key attribute from the Internet, in that they offer open accessibility for all users. Philip Drake and Andy Miah argue that the Internet, and therefore social networks and blogs, downsize the gatekeeping processes that exist in other mass media forms. They further state that this means that online information can spread unfiltered and thus does not rest on strict framework conditions such as those on television or in newspapers. This, however, remains subject to an ongoing debate within research. Through presence on social media platforms, stars and celebrities attempt on the one hand to participate in the production of their image; on the other hand, they must remain present in these media in order to stay on the media's and consequently on the audience's agenda. According to Daschmann (2007), celebrities all have to compete for the public's (limited) attention. In such a competitive environment a famous person must therefore remain present on all the accessible media channels.
caption: Katy Perry, one of the most followed people on Twitter
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