Listening Goals and Parasocial Relationships: How Listening Styles Impact the Development of Parasocial Relationships with Media Personas

ABSTRACT

Recognizing the goal-directed nature of listening, this study investigates how listening style preferences relate to the development of parasocial relationships with hosts of popular media. Participants (N = 149) completed an online questionnaire which asked participants to identify their favorite media host(s), complete the revised listening styles profile, and complete a measure of parasocial relationships. The results of three exploratory research questions reveal that even with a wide variety of reported favorite media hosts, respondents frequently follow their favorite host(s) on social media and that YouTube, in addition to television, is a popular way to access rich visual and audio programming from host(s). Relational listening, in particular, emerges as an important predictor of the strength of parasocial relationships with media personas. We discuss theoretical and practical recommendations for future research at the crossroads of listening, interpersonal communication, and media studies.

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to acknowledge the classmates enrolled in COM 403 during the Fall 2019 semester for their assistance in distributing the survey as part of their sampling homework assignment and would also like to acknowledge Dr. Jenny Rosenberg for sharing the survey with students enrolled in COM 100 during the same semester. We also thank the anonymous reviewers and the editorial team for their feedback on this manuscript.

Disclosure Statement

We have no known conflict of interest to disclose.

Notes

¹ Irrelevant responses included: (a) blank responses listing nothing (n = 9); (b) responses stating “I don’t know” or “I don’t have a favorite,” “N/A,” or other “lol” (n = 10); (c) responses listing an entire network with multiple programs and hosts like Cartoon Network, Fox, NPR, or ESPN (n = 16); (d) responses listing applications, not people, including Spotify, Twitter, Youtube, and Snapchat (n = 12), and (e) responses listing musical preferences and artists, including “Hip Hop music” (n = 3). Further, the authors excluded four responses listing The Voice and SNL as the answer was too general to identify a favorite host due to the number of seasons and hosts involved in the program.

² We do note that a predictive SEM model could be used to test our research questions. With the introduction of dichotomous variables (e.g., social media behavior, gender) and the final sample size, we did not use modeling techniques.