Narrative Engagement and Vicarious Interaction with Multiple Characters

Abstract

This study investigates how audience members relate to and vicariously interact with multiple characters while viewing a narrative. Under the framework of the theory of situation models, we applied a real-time thought-listing technique that incorporated Twitter and focused on three debuting TV dramas to explore how the participants followed multiple characters while watching prime-time television dramas. We examined 3,274 tweets across the three TV series and found that monitoring a greater diversity of characters is associated with an increased number of questions asked and more accurate predictions of future events. The participants who made more accurate predictions had higher narrative engagement. In addition, the participants who had more thoughts about the self tracked a greater diversity of characters and made more accurate predictions about the plot. The results are discussed in terms of the developing literature on narratives in mass communication and entertainment research.

Notes

¹ This study was approved by Institutional Review Board of the Ohio State University on January 3, 2012.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Ministry of Science and Technology, Taiwan (MOST 106-2628-H-194-001-SS3).

Notes on contributors

Shu-Fang Lin

Shu-Fang Lin (Ph.D., The Ohio State University, 2005) is a professor in the Department of Communication at National Chung Cheng University. Her research interests include cognitive and emotional effects of entertainment media.

Katherine R. Dale

Katherine R. Dale (Ph.D., The Ohio State University, 2015) is an assistant professor in the School of Communication at Florida State University. Her research interests include positive media psychology, media effects, and intergroup interaction.

Daniel G. McDonald

Daniel G. McDonald (Ph.D., University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1983) is professor emeritus in the School of Communication at The Ohio State University. His research interests include the behavioral, cognitive and affective aspects of the audience’s experience during mediated communication.

James G. Collier

James G. Collier (Ph.D., The Ohio State University, 2013) is a visiting assistant professor at Wittenberg University. His research interests include cognitive processing of audio-visual and text-based narratives.

Kaitlyn Jones

Kaitlyn Jones (M.A., The Ohio State University, 2013) was a master’s student in the School of Communication at The Ohio State University. Her research interests include parasocial interaction, fan research, and social identity.