Para-social interaction is the simulacrum of having a transactional face-to-face encounter with someone who appears in media, in the form of audio and especially video (Horton and Whol, 2006). The mediated persona, in such cases as reality TV shows and partisan news programs, gazes directly into the lens of the camera and engages the audience to create an illusion of real contact and intimacy, sometimes even responding to anticipated audience responses. Horton and Whol argue that, despite the obviously one-sided nature of these observational experiences, the illusory interaction allows the viewer to ‘know’ and connect with the personae. This offers the viewer a dependable, continuous personality that can be relied upon for regimented pseudo-social experience.
On the producers’ behalf, there are various strategies to maximize the one-sided intimacy between the viewer and personae, including the use of non-verbal qualities that mimic face-to-face interaction; blurring the distinction between reality and production; and “blending” the personae with the audience by having them “leave” the obviously produced format of the show. The ultimate goal is to make the audience feel, insofar as possible, that they are participating in the unfolding life of the personae. Thus, the personae needs to be credible, appearing to be a person who is genuinely expressing herself to a social other. The format of such TV shows accommodates this sense of credibility by guiding the audience in “appropriate” responses that help shape a desired, typically positive, set of perceptions about such and such persona. Desired audience reactions are anticipated and folded into the direction given to the personae. For a live version of this, we can turn to professional wrestling event, such as those put on by the World Wrestling Entertainment, Inc. The referees are fed commands by producers who are gauging the audience’s reactions to the characters in the match, these commands are relayed to the wrestlers, and they have to improvise moves in such a way as to maximize the audience’s reactions.
There’s also a didactic quality in these scenarios. The various types of personae (class, sex, orientation, etc…) offer the viewer experience with people of different social roles, whether or not these types of people may appear in his social world. While these para-social interactions are typically complementary to the lived social worlds of audience members, in some cases it may be compensatory or substitutionary for those with social constraints.
Handelman (2008) suggests that the viewer is “interacting with himself” in para-social interactions. He claims that the “para” in this phenomenon “denotes a closeness of position: a correspondence of parts, a situation on the other side – but also wrongness and irregularity” and as such lacks the authenticity of a real interaction. He critiques Horton and Whol’s original conception of PSI at various levels. Ultimatley, he argues that they assume the viewer to be passive rather than a creative agent with potential “interior sociality” when watching TV. To challenge their assumption, he takes a phenomenological approach to TV viewing. This reflection surfaces various levels of intra-action with programs, from visual attendance to depths of the images themselves, to their McLuhanite tactility, to the dream-like, imaginative agency one exercises when following the narrative. Drawing on Goffman, he proceeds to extend the concept of “encounter” in a way that describes humans as “interactive in all domains of being” who virtually encounter the personae on the screen.
Contemporary church (especially global and mega-churches) are rich sites for para-social inquiry. Take for instance a woman who used to go to church every weekend, but now stays in bed on Sundays and watches a televangelist in her PJs. When she brings him up in conversation with friends, she tends to call him “my pastor”. Despite the fact that she traded the pews for pillows and the pulpit for pixels, she still tithes and considers her viewership a valid alternative to attending church. The power of this para-social interaction may have implications on various aspects of religious identity and involvement. The most obvious is that she no longer goes to a physical church, and thus no longer has the community of the physical church. Pseudo-interaction with one person has replaced myriad opportunities for interaction with current and future members of her previous congregation. It necessarily changes the boundaries for what is acceptably deemed “church” and “ministry”. It also highlights one aspect of a trend of smaller mainline churches capitulating under the swelling pressure of global and digital churches that willing to risk compromising traditional church values in order to extend their reach. The phenomenon is far from new – waves of evangelicalism and fundamentalism have swelled with their canny use of broadcast media dating back to the radio days. However, para-social interaction, whether it be a the pastor face looking at you in the nosebleed seats of an auditorium via Megatron, or from the TV-bearing altar in front of your couch, has become a central strategy of the contemporary church.
References:
Towards the Virtual Encounter: Horton and Wohl’s ‘Mass Communication and Para-Social Interaction’,” Elihu Katz, et. Al., eds. Canonic Texts in Media Research [Polity, 2003], pp. 137-151.
Horton, Donald, and R. Richard Wohl. "Mass communication and para-social interaction: Observations on intimacy at a distance." psychiatry 19.3 (1956): 215-229.
