Loading...
A Parasocial Approach to Community Involvement: Developing and Assessing a Measure of Parasocial Community Ties for Members of Online Communities
Mihailova, Teodora Mihailova
Mihailova, Teodora Mihailova
Citations
Altmetric:
Abstract
This research sought to develop and test a measure for parasocial community ties to online communities. A deep dive into the research areas of online communities and parasocial phenomena were used to develop theoretically derived subcomponents for the measure. An initial measure was put together using a combination of adapted parasocial relationship items and newly written items. The measure was refined using qualitative focus group feedback and then tested using two rounds of quantitative data, one for exploring and determining its factor structure, and another for assessing and proposing improvements to the factor structure model from the previous study. Hypothesis testing and exploring factor correlations supported the conceptualization of PCT as a parasocial phenomenon. The current work also set forth suggestions for further development of some subscales to remedy existing flaws. The introduction of PCT as a concept makes theoretical contributions to the parasocial literature (by providing proof of concept for a parasocial relationship with a collective, rather than an individual) and common bond vs. common identity theory (by suggesting parasocial community ties as a potential third orthogonal dimension of motivations for online community use). The proposed scale and its future subscale extensions offer to make contributions to the online community literature by comparing the degrees to which members of online communities are driven by social intentions when compared to enjoying the parasocial fantasy of hypothetical connections with others.
Description
Date
2023-08-31
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
University of Kansas
Collections
Archive Status
This item contains archived web content.
Files
Loading...
1011693_1.pdf
Adobe PDF, 2.24 MB
Research Projects
Organizational Units
Journal Issue
Keywords
Communication, common bond vs. common identity, online communities, parasocial community ties, parasocial relationships, scale development