I’m Nervous about Sharing This Secret with You: Youtube Influencers Generate Strong Parasocial Interactions by Discussing Personal Issues

Abstract

Performers may generate loyalty partly through eliciting illusory personal connections with their audience, parasocial relationships (PSRs), and individual illusory exchanges, parasocial interactions (PSIs). On social media, semi-PSIs are real but imbalanced exchanges with audiences, including through comments on influencers’ videos, and strong semi-PSIs are those that occur within PSRs. This article introduces and assesses an automatic method to detect videos with strong PSI potential.

Keywords

• parasocial interaction
• parasocial relationships
• influencers
• youtube
• social media
• semi-psi