Gayle S. Stever, Ph. D.

by Gayle S. Stever, November 2016

In a participant-observer ethnographic study, the researcher offers evidence from 10 years of observation of the Josh Groban fandom as an example of fans becoming friendly acquaintances of celebrities. Contrary to the way much of the psychological literature depicts fans as celebrity worshippers or stalkers, the largest percentage of the fans observed in this study showed normal social engagement with others outside of their fan activity, and a friendly acquaintanceship with Groban that is similar to other kinds of relationships happening outside of the context of mediated relationships. Fans who pursued these relationships did so within a social context and network of other fans in most cases. Connection through music, relief from various kinds of life stressors, or the desire to participate in charity efforts are offered as some of the explanations for what motivates the fan to seek out this kind of relationship with an attractive media persona.

by Gayle S. Stever, March 2016

Article: Forming attachments to those people proximal to the individual was the only option prior to mass media. In an era of mass media, individuals become acquainted with media personae, expanding greatly the pool of available attachment objects. This increases the possibility of a parasocial attachment, defined as a nonreciprocated attachment to a familiar other, and from whom one derives safe haven and felt security. This paper addresses 2 questions: From an evolutionary perspective, what is the expected way that viewers should perceive and react to attractive and familiar media personae? Second, as human beings evolve socially in a mediated environment, will parasocial attachments be adaptive or will they encourage, as a result of confusion over “real” versus parasocial relationships, some measure of dysfunction? Based on data collected during participant observer ethnography within active fan groups, parasocial attachment to celebrities would be a likely outcome of repeated exposure to those celebrities in visual media. The Media Equation (Reeves & Nass, 1996) states that human perceptions do not differentiate between those that emanate from the real world and those that come from media, helping explain the strong feelings that some media viewers develop for personae only encountered through media. The conclusion is that attachment to celebrities and even celebrity worship itself is to be expected, rather than being an abnormal and an aberrant manifestation of human behavior. Although most case examples of parasocial attachment appeared to support positive functioning, in some cases parasocial attachments can be problematic.

by Gayle S. Stever and Kevin Lawson, January 2013

Twitter is a relatively new social media website and a good option for celebrities who want to chat with their fans without having to give away personal access information. This paper presents an analysis of a sample of the Twitter accounts of 12 entertainment media celebrities, 6 males and 6 females, all taken from 2009-2012 Twitter feeds. Since little is known about Twitter, a grounded theory approach for this study was used. Twitter can be used to learn about parasocial interaction, the unreciprocated interaction between individuals of differing status and knowledge of one another. This analysis provides a first step in that endeavor. Results showed that there was a great deal of variety from celebrity to celebrity in the ways Twitter was being used. All coded celebrities used Twitter to communicate both with other celebrities and with members of the public or fans about their work as well as personal likes and dislikes, conveying information that revealed personal activities that are not typically shared in other forums. Although fans connecting with celebrities via Twitter have some limited access to communicate with the celebrity, we conclude that the relationship is still parasocial in spite of the occasional reply a fan might receive. Our analysis showed that for celebrities who were using Twitter, the dialogue is serious, meaningful, and appears to have impact for those participating. In the last two to three years, social media have proliferated on the Internet. Web sites like MySpace, Facebook, and LiveJournal made it possible for people who had minimal Internet skills to set up personal pages wherein they could share a daily posting of thoughts, philosophies and ideals, photographs, web links and other items of interest with an audience. Celebrities also have availed themselves of social media, but in each of the above cases, in order to give access to audience members or fans, the application often gave away an undesirable level of access to personal information. MySpace is a good example of this.

by Gayle S. Stever, January 2013

This article delineates the distinctions between mediated and parasocial relationships before outlining the key aspects of parasocial theory and suggesting that the theory be expanded to consistently include parasocial attachment as a category distinct from parasocial relationships. Parasocial theory involves interactions, relationships and attachments between people of differing status such that one person is well known to the other but that knowing is not reciprocated. As media become more pervasive in the day-to-day lives of individuals, it becomes more and more important to understand the mechanisms whereby parasocial interaction, relationships, and attachments function in both development and social life. This paper proposed an integrated theory of parasocial dynamics, drawing principally from communications studies and psychology, while also recognizing the contributions of sociology and anthropology. Parasocial attachment is proposed to be a form of classical human attachment as defined by Bowlby (1969) and Ainsworth (1978), and the qualities and characteristics that define the other two identified forms of attachment, infant-caregiver and adult romantic, apply equally well to parasocial attachment.