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They perform their skill—gaming, in most cases—from behind a thick veneer of familiarity. Maybe it's because they let viewers into their homes, or because the live-streaming format feels candid or because of their unprecedented accessibility, but there's something about being an entertainer on Twitch that blurs the line between viewer and friend. It can be hard to keep a healthy distance from fans. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parasocial_breakup |
And, for fans, it can occasionally be hard to tell the difference between entertainer and companion".The Verge and the HuffPost have both specifically highlighted the harassment female Twitch streamers experience. Jesselyn Cook, for HuffPost, wrote that "most all women who earn a living on Twitch know what it's like to have male viewers who, after spending countless hours watching them in real time, develop obsessive feelings of romantic and sexual entitlement. The result is an environment where extreme harassment, rape and death threats, blackmailing, stalking and worse have become regular workplace hazards. Female streamers who spoke to HuffPost said they wish they'd known before joining Twitch that they were also signing up for a torrent of endless, dehumanizing harassment with little to no recourse". | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parasocial_breakup |
Podcasts, episodic series of spoken-word digital audio files that a user can download to a personal device, are also known for fostering parasocial relationships between podcasters and listeners. As early as 2012, Robert C. MacDougall wrote "The podcast, and particularly the podcast listened to on the move, may be part of an evolution in parasocial phenomena and a fundamentally new part of mediated interpersonal communication. Podcasts enhance the personal feel and all attendant psychodynamic effects of Fessenden's primordial radio show. "Laith Zuraikat wrote on "The Parasocial Nature of the Podcast" in his book Radio's Second Century (2020). | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parasocial_breakup |
Author Wil Williams wrote, "there is a difference between feeling a friendship, a sense of comfort, between yourself and a podcaster, and assuming that friendship to be real. Something that makes podcasters appealing is that they have an everyman quality to them: anyone can make a podcast, and this means that in many genres, podcasters feel more "normal" than creators in other mediums. It's easy to feel like podcasters would be your friend if you ever met: it's likely the listener is of the same socioeconomic status as the podcaster, sharing not only other basic demographics as the podcaster, but also their interests, jokes, and philosophies. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parasocial_breakup |
"In The Guardian, Rachel Aroesti wrote about how, during the lockdowns necessitated by the COVID-19 pandemic, "podcasters replaced our real friends providing companionship that is increasingly difficult to distinguish from the real thing." She wrote how "Podcasts are intimate, with no in-the-room audience to remind you of your own distance. "Semantic scholar Mikhaela Nadora (Portland State University) wrote that " with podcast hosts may cultivate the same way real-life relationships do. As social relationships are important to us, with the new self-autonomous and personalized advances in our media and technology landscape, we can have the same intimate relationships with media figures." | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parasocial_breakup |
Parasocial interaction (PSI) theory was used to understand consumers' purchasing behavior in online context. With the development of social media, such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube, both companies and consumers start to use social commerce platforms more frequently. Many studies indicate that, among various factors affecting consumers' purchase decision on SCPs, such as credibility of products, parasocial interaction exerts more potential influence on users' final decisions. Sokolova and Kefi conducted a study with large data set (1209 respondents) from the audiences of four popular influencers in the beauty and fashion sector in France to discover the influence of parasocial interaction and credibility on consumers' purchase intention. Their study discovers that younger generations value parasocial interaction and their personal attachment to influencers more than credibility.On the social commerce platforms, users intend to build parasocial interaction, one with other users, one with celebrities. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parasocial_breakup |
Certain social media users are active creators of online content, such as personal experiences, ideas, reviews, for targeted audience, which are called influencers. Influencers can become experts, similar to celebrities to some extent, and their posts may influence products and brands and affect potential customers, i.e. their followers. The users in a social commerce platform "meet" with other users and influencers through the images, videos, and feedbacks that they share on the social media. By the time, after multiples times of "meetings", the imaginary intimacy is improved, and the users will deliberately maintain the online friendship, which is a parasocial interaction. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parasocial_breakup |
Influencers on the social media platforms often comment on the products they have tested, and promote them online to other users by providing their feelings and self-experiences along with images and videos.Some brands have their Instagram influencer marketing strategies to increase followers' buying intention and trustworthiness perception. Under the parasocial relationship, users intend to rely on the images or comments that influencers had on the products, which will influence consumers' final decisions. Thus, many social commerce merchants utilize this psychological implication, and sift beautiful images and positive comments on products to provide users a more intuitive shopping experience.For instance, the occurrence and popularity of vlog creates a social space where strangers can share feelings and build intimate relationship. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parasocial_breakup |
Followers of influencers would make a comparison of the tastes between themselves and the celebrities or influencers they watch, so that PSI has generated among them. Many merchants pay vloggers for recommending and persuading their subscribers to purchase the products. Vlogs provide vivid visual experience for viewers, and the audience could perceive the closeness with the vloggers that build a virtual relationship like face to face via this medium. The audience may be influenced by those vlogs and vloggers to make their purchasing decisions. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parasocial_breakup |
PSI relationships are more readily formed between social media user and celebrities. On social media, celebrities build and strengthen more intimate relationships with consumers and fans. Celebrities' self-disclosure could allow their fans and audience get connected with those celebrities and stimulate their illusion of in-person relationship with celebrities. Simultaneously, the context of SCPs, supported by Web 2.0 social media technologies, stimulates users' parasocial interactions with celebrities and experts. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parasocial_breakup |
Uncertainty reduction theory is an example of a way that this can occur. The process of repeated exposure to an individual gradually reduces the user's level of uncertainty, which increases the user's chances of liking this celebrity.On some social shopping websites, users could follow celebrities and interact with those people to generate an illusionary bond between the celebrities and themselves. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parasocial_breakup |
Repeated exposure to the celebrity gives users a sense of predictability in their actions, which engenders a sense of loyalty. PSI help increased more social attractions for celebrities and more credibility that the customers could trust.Users who are immersed in celebrity-fans PSI may affirm their loyalty through various activities, including purchasing products endorsed by celebrities. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parasocial_breakup |
Unlike influencers, celebrities bring their fans with stronger impulse purchase. Targeted consumers (fans) desire to interact with celebrities, instead of passively receiving information from celebrities. By purchasing and supporting the celebrity endorsing products, fans may build more intimate relationship with celebrities in their imagination.In a 2014 journal article, Seung-A Annie Jin and Joe Phua discussed how they conducted studies to determine multiple hypothesis based on the number of followers a celebrity had in correlation to the trust that imparted onto a consumer. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parasocial_breakup |
This study was done in terms of a celebrity endorsing a product and the likelihood of the consumer to purchase the product after seeing the promotion. Consumers perceived the celebrity with a high number of followers as being more physically attractive, trustworthy, and competent.A high number of followers on the celebrity endorser's profile also significantly increased consumers' intention to build an online friendship with the celebrity. The study found that if a celebrity with a higher number of followers was perceived as more trustworthy, the consumer exhibited significantly higher postexposure product involvement and buying intention as opposed to those who were exposed to a celebrity with a lower follower count.Merchants on social commerce platforms will find huge potentials of analyzing and applying parasocial interactions to manipulate consumers' purchase intention. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parasocial_breakup |
In addition to influencing fans to purchase products, celebrities can also influence fans to engage in similar conversational styles. Fans, or audience members, in parasocial relationships may "appear to be accommodating to characters' linguistic styles". : 463 As fans continue to interact in a parasocial relationship, there is potential for them to mirror the conversational style of the celebrity while communicating on different platforms of social media. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parasocial_breakup |
As social media relationships grew between celebrities and influencers, businesses created social media profiles for audience engagement. Fast food restaurants have started comedy Twitter accounts to interact with their customers in a personal way. The companies' Twitter accounts respond to tweets from customers, tell jokes and engage in the online industry in ways that create PSI with the consumers. This strategy is working.A study done by Lauren I. Labrecque in 2013 found that customers have higher loyalty intentions and are more likely to provide information for the brand when the brand fostered PSIs. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parasocial_breakup |
The study also showed that these outcomes were less likely when the consumer felt the response from the company's social media account were automated. Furthermore, including personal details and behind-the-scenes ideation in interactions with consumers also triggers PSI and results in a positive impact.Another parasocial interaction usage in organizational communication is that CEOs' social media image also contributes to the company's image and reputation. Therefore, CEOs have paid attention to their communication with customers, employees, and investors. They would improve their public features through social media to communicate with the stakeholders. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parasocial_breakup |
According to Ko and Chen (2020), "Live streaming was originally used in broadcasting sporting events or news issues on TV. As the mobile Internet gets more and more popular, now the netizen and small companies can broadcast themselves via the use of live-streaming APP". Many platforms have developed and launched their live stream function, like Taobao.com and Facebook. For online retailers like Taobao.com or Tmall.com, users could follow and interact with the hosts and celebrities like being friends with them. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parasocial_breakup |
"China had up to 433 million live streaming viewers in August 2019 . The use of live streaming to promote brands and products is "exploding" in the E-commerce field in China . For example, during the "June 18" event in 2019, Taobao's live streaming platform drove sales of 13 billion yuan, with the number of merchants broadcasting live streaming increasing by nearly 120% year-on-year. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parasocial_breakup |
The number of broadcasts grew by 150% year- on-year . "From the perspective of a retailer, live streaming provides more opportunities for marketing, branding, improving customer services and increasing revenue. As a customer, live streaming also offers a more synchronic and interactive shopping experience than before. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parasocial_breakup |
Interactions between streamers/sellers and consumers also help customers get higher quality information about the products, which is different from traditional shopping method.According to Xu, Wu and Li (2020), "streaming commerce creates a novel shopping environment that provides multiple stimuli to motivate potential consumers to indulge in their shopping behaviors. It has emerged and shows great potential as a novel business model to add dynamic real-time interaction among sellers (streamers) and consumers (viewers), provide accurate information, and involve hedonic factors to attract consumers to indulge in consumption processes. Viewers are enabled to obtain dynamic and accurate information by watching live streams, develop virtual social relationships with streamers, and enjoy relaxing and entertaining hours while watching attractive streamers".Livestreaming permit the viewers and the streamers engage in a real-time interaction to create intimacy and closeness, thus, the credibility and trustworthiness would be reinforced through dynamic interactions. In America, retailers like Amazon and QVC have also worked on their own live streaming shopping platforms to take this huge advantage. Interpersonal relations on livestreaming services occupy a position in between social and parasocial relations, giving livestreaming an exceptional position in the entire landscape of social media. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parasocial_breakup |
Most studies find that PSI only occurs as friendship, which is overly restrictive theoretically and practically. It is common that people may build parasocial interactions with certain media figures, even though they do not consider to be "friends", such as a villain in a show. Though PSI with disliked figures occurs less likely than with heroes and positive characters, the situation of "love to hate" relationship with disliked characters still occurs. Some researchers realize the restriction of limiting PSIs as friendship, which may preclude them from capture broader situation of meaningful media user reactions.In 2010, Tian and Hoffner conduct an online questionnaire measuring the responses from 174 participants to a liked, neutral, or disliked character from the ABC drama Lost. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parasocial_breakup |
All participants reported the identification they had perceived with the character, as well as the parasocial interaction and how did they try to change their perspectives to be more like the character. According to the whole sample, perceived similarity was a significant positive predictor of both identification and parasocial interaction. Undeniably, parasocial interaction was higher for liked than for neutral and disliked characters based on the study. Parasocial interaction still appeared with liked, neutral and disliked characters. The prevailing perspective of PSI as a friendship is not appropriate based on the theoretical and experimental findings, and many researchers start to improve the measurement of the PSI's concept. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parasocial_breakup |
One direction for future PSI concerns the advancement of methodology. As theories become more defined and complex, experiments seem to be necessary to be employed in testing hypotheses. Because the meanings of perception and emotion take up much of what parasocial interaction/relationship research interest, the cause and effect is hard to be distinguished and potential spuriousness is difficult to be avoided. For example, whether similarity precedes PSI and whether mediated interaction create a sense of similarity requires experimental validation.Cohen also suggested that different types of relationships are encouraged to be analyzed within different genres, which particularly challenges scholars in examining the mediated relationship in reality TV shows (e.g., Survivor). | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parasocial_breakup |
These prototypical reality shows are built around narratives, displaying a lot of emotions which seem to solicit empathy and identification, and also demonstrating the characters' skills towards developing fandom. Ratings and audience responses provide strong evidence that those reality shows create significant mediated relationship, but future inquiries should examine whether this new kind of mediated interaction/relationship evolves or do these interactions/relationships conform to existing patterns.The influence of media in childhood has received little attention from developmental psychologists, even though children have a high degree of exposure to media. While many studies and experiments have explored the nature of parasocial relationships, there are many opportunities for future research. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parasocial_breakup |
For example, a potential future area of research could be the issue of reruns, where the relationships have outcomes which are already known or well-established. In addition, another area of research could focus on production techniques or televisual approaches. This would include techniques such as chiaroscuro or flat lighting, the strategic placement of close-ups or establishing shots, deductive or inductive shot sequences, hip hop editing, or desaturation. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parasocial_breakup |
These techniques have long been theorized to have some sort of influence on the formation of parasocial relationships, but their influence has yet to be determined.The prevailing use of social media and its impact on mediated relationships also requires further study of PSI. Different social media platforms provide channels through which celebrities communicate with their followers easily, making parasocial interaction/relationships seem less unidirectional and perhaps more satisfying and intense. As such, whether social media has made PSI more a part of everyday life needs further exploration. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parasocial_breakup |
Technological development has been raising questions regarding the role of PSI in our social lives, as media content is available in more places and times. Our mediated friends are never too far away; instead, they actually rest in our pockets and sleep in our beds. Whether this means that we spend more time and effort on cultivating these relationships and will be less dependent on real social relationships, needs further exploration.While parasocial relationships are typically seen as a relationship with a media persona whom the individual views positively, more research should be done surround parasocial relationships with media personas who the individual views in a negative sense. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parasocial_breakup |
There are many instances on social media where negative interactions exist (negative sentiments expressed towards politicians, athletes, etc.). It would be interesting to understand how these negative interactions and relationships can affect us, and our other relationships. Additionally, more research should be done on the well-being consequences of parasocial relationships with media persona who may inspire hate or other negative emotions, such as towards a particular group of people. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parasocial_breakup |
The role that mediated communication and engagement played during the pandemic may have led to media personas being evaluated with similar (or the same) cognitive processes we use when interacting with real-life friends. This may continue to influence our parasocial relationships, and more should be learned regarding the long-term effects of COVID-19 on the functioning of parasocial relationships. Other concerns include the continuity of media figures representation across various media outlets, and the notion of parasocial interaction as compensation for lack of social outlets. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parasocial_breakup |
Popstars, for example, may not only appear on television, but on several different television or radio programs, as either a chat guest or a performer; further repeated viewings of these stars would intensify visual aspects of parasocial interaction with that star. Most research has typically characterized media users as a television viewer who is often solitary and in need of social interaction. The different types of user-figure interaction can be addressed by conceptualizing parasocial interaction as an extension of ordinary social interaction. Through close examination of social encounters that are significant for parasocial relationships, we can continue to distinguish between parasocial interaction as an isolated activity and as longer-term interaction. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parasocial_breakup |
The terms parasocial interactions and parasocial relationships were coined by anthropologist Donald Horton and sociologist R. Richard Wohl in 1956, laying the foundation for the topic within the field of communication studies. Originating from psychology, parasocial phenomena comes from a wide range of scientific backgrounds and methodological approaches. The study of parasocial relationships has increased with the growth of mass and social media such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, particularly by those investigating advertising effectiveness and journalism. Horton and Wohl have stated that television personas offer the media user a sense of intimacy and have influence over them by using their appearance and gesture in a way that is seen as being engaging, directly addressing the audience, and conversing with them in a friendly and personal manner. By viewing media personas regularly and feeling a sense of trust with the persona, parasocial relationships offer the media user a continuous relationship that intensifies. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parasocial_breakup |
Advertising and marketing can use media personas to increase brand awareness, keep media users engaged, and increase purchase intention by seeking out attractive media personas. If media personas show that they are interested in and engage in rewarding interactions with media users, then if the media user likes the persona they will reciprocate interactions and over time form a parasocial relationship with them.In this social media era, media users are able to have interactions with the media persona that are more intimate, open, reciprocal, and frequent. More media personas are using social media platforms for personal communication, revealing their personal lives and thoughts to consumers. The more frequent and conversational that the media persona self discloses via social media results in media users feeling high levels of intimacy, loyalty, and friendship. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parasocial_breakup |
Media users know that the chances of receiving a direct message or getting a retweet from a celebrity are highly unlikely, but the possibility gives fans a sense of intimacy and adds authenticity to one-sided parasocial relationships with their favorite personas.Celebrity endorsements are so effective with purchase intention because parasocial relationships form such an influential bond of trust. The acceptance and trustworthiness that the media user feels towards the media persona is carried over into the brand that is being promoted. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parasocial_breakup |
Media users feel that they understand media personas and appreciate their values and motives. This accumulation of time and knowledge acquired of the media persona translates into feelings of loyalty, which can then influence their attitudes, voting decisions, prejudices, change their ideas about reality, willingness to donate, and purchasing advertised products. Celebrities and popular social media personalities who engage in social media endorsements are referred to as influencers. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parasocial_breakup |
Parasocial relationships are a psychological attachment in which the media persona offers a continuing relationship with the media user. They grow to depend on them, plan to interact with them, count on them much like a close friend. They acquire a history with them and believe they know the persona better than others. Media users are free to partake in the benefits of real relations with no responsibility or effort. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parasocial_breakup |
They can control their experience or walk away from parasocial relationships freely.A media user's bond with media personas can lead to higher self-confidence, a stronger perception of problem focused coping strategies, and a stronger sense of belonging. However these one-sided relationships can also foster an impractical body image, can reduce self-esteem, increase media consumption, and media addiction.Parasocial relationships are seen frequently with post-retirement aged media users due to high television consumption and loss of social contacts or activities. However, adolescents are also prone to form parasocial relationships. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parasocial_breakup |
This is attributed to puberty, the discovery of sexuality and identity, and the idolization of media stars. Women are generally more likely than men to form parasocial relationships.Some results indicate that parasocial relationships with media personas increase because the media user is lonely, dissatisfied, emotionally unstable, and/or has unattractive relationship alternatives. Some can use these parasocial relationships as a substitute for real social contact. A media user's personality affects how they use social media and may also vary an individual's pursuit of intimacy and approach to relationships i.e. extroverts may prefer to seek social gratification through face-to-face interactions as opposed to mediated ones.Media users use mediated communication to gratify their personal needs, such as to relax, seek pleasure, boredom, or out of habit. In this era of social media and the internet media users have constant access to on demand viewing, constant interactions on hand held mobile devices, and widespread Internet access. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parasocial_breakup |
Experiencing negative emotional responses as a result of an ending parasocial relationship, i.e. death of a television persona in a series, is known as a parasocial breakup. More intense levels of parasocial breakup could be predicted by loneliness and observing media for companionship.Jonathan Cohen, from the Department of Communications in University of Haifa, links parasocial relationships and breakups to social relationship attachment styles. The results and lasting effects of a parasocial breakup may rely on the attachment styles of the person experiencing and initiating the attachment, much like social relationships. Individuals with an anxious attachment style experience more extreme reactions to parasocial breakups, compared to avoidant and secure types. The in-person/real life social relationship status of an individual does not affect the intensity of distress or discomfort felt in parasocial breakups.Age, however, shows correlation with the intensity of distress at parasocial breakups, as Cohen finds young people (under the age of 20) are more susceptible to strong symptoms of PSB (Parasocial breakup).For some people, parasocial breakups can be as simple as avoiding the content concerning the subject of the parasocial tie.According to Cohen, the level of distress to the individuals experiencing parasocial breakup depends on the strength and extremity of the bond. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parasocial_breakup |
Parasocial relationships with fictional characters are more intense than with nonfictional characters, because of the feeling of being completely present in a fictional world. Narrative realism—the plausibility that a fictional world and its characters could exist—and external realism—the level at which aspects of the story map to a person's real world experiences—play a part in heightening one's connections to fictional characters. If a narrative can convince a viewer that a character is plausible and/or relatable, it creates a space for the viewer to form a parasocial relationship with said character. There is a desire for camaraderie that can be built through bonding over a fictional persona.Due to the span and breadth of media franchises such as the Harry Potter, Disney, and Star Wars series, consumers are able to engage more deeply and form strong parasocial relationships. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parasocial_breakup |
These fictional parasocial relationships can extend further than watching the movies or reading the books into official and fan fiction websites, social media, and even extend beyond media to have an in-person experience at national and international theme park attractions.For individuals who become very attached to fictional characters, and may or may not depend on them emotionally, even the thought of that character being removed from the story in some way (death, being written out of the story, etc.) can be extremely painful.The dread of a fictional character's death (the parasocial breakup) can be much stronger than that of a parasocial breakup with a public figure.Parasocial relationships with fictional characters may be affected by external events relating to the actors who play them, and vice versa. For example, if a scandal were to occur with an actor, individuals who had parasocial connections to the character they played may reevaluate their opinions on the character. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parasocial_breakup |
A parasocial breakup may occur with the fictional character, as a result of the scandal. However, the reverse, where a positive impression of an actor due to an event is created, does not apply. Fictional characters, in this case, are seen as separate from the actor and their good contributions or personality outside of the role. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parasocial_breakup |
Rubin analyzed the process of parasocial relationship development by applying principles of uncertainty reduction theory, which states that uncertainty about others is reduced over time through communication, allowing for increased attraction and relationship growth. Other theories that apply to parasocial relationships are social penetration theory, which is based on the premise that positive, intimate interactions produce further rewards in the relationship and the uses and gratifications theory, which states that media users are goal driven and want media to gratify their needs.In 1956, T.M. Newcomb's (1956) reinforcement theory explained that following a rewarding interaction an attraction is formed. A gratifying relationship is formed as a result of social attraction and interactive environments created by the media persona.The most used measurement instrument for parasocial phenomena is the Parasocial Interaction Scale (PSI Scale), which was developed by Rubin, Perse, and Powell in 1985 to assess interpersonal relationships with media personalities.Mina Tsay and Brianna Bodine developed a revised version of Rubin's scale by addressing that parasocial relationship engagement is dictated by a media users personality and motivations. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parasocial_breakup |
They identified four distinct dimensions that address engagement with media personas from affective, cognitive, and behavioral perspectives. The dimensions assessed how people see media personas as role models, how people desire to communicate with them and learn more about them, and how familiar they are to the individuals. Tsay and Bodine noticed how greater levels of interaction can be formed between the media user and the media persona because of the shift of media and mass communication in recent years. Media users are now able to choose how they want to interact with and initiate in their own media experiences online, such as fan groups, Twitter, and character blogs. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parasocial_breakup |
Parasocial relationships have been studied in various contexts, but the COVID-19 pandemic created a unique environment in which to study them. Due to the global pandemic, people's social routines were abruptly interrupted; with the beginning of social-distancing and isolation protocols, people forcibly experienced a decrease in their face-to-face (FtF) interactions. To maintain communication with others, people turned to screens and media such as Zoom and FaceTime (“mediated” communication). This shift to mediated communication “blurred” the differences that existed between social and parasocial interactions and relationships. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parasocial_breakup |
People would interact with their friends in similar ways as they would with media personas who they had parasocial relationships with. For example, one could like and comment on someone's Instagram posts in the same way in both scenarios. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parasocial_breakup |
This environment presented a unique environment to study the parasocial compensation hypothesis, which suggests that parasocial relationships can function as an alternative to typical social relationships. One study found that individuals in a certain identity domain who lacked friends in real life made up for this deficiency by forming intense parasocial relationships (Bond, 2018), supporting this hypothesis. During the pandemic, studies found that parasocial relationships strengthened during the social distancing phase of COVID-19, further demonstrating how parasocial relationships may in fact have a compensation function. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parasocial_breakup |
The individuals who reported the strongest growth in their parasocial relationships were those who decreased their face-to-face social interactions; this supports the parasocial compensation hypothesis. However, these weren't the only individuals who experienced an increase in strength in their parasocial relationships. Those who used increased their use of mediated communication to communicate with friends also demonstrated growth. Overall, we saw a strengthening of parasocial relationships during the beginning phases of the pandemic. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parasocial_breakup |
One potential explanation for the growth in parasocial relationships is the cognitive distinctions between social and parasocial interactions which were no longer as well-defined. There were likely greater similarities in processing the social engagement of friends and media persona. When the only way to interact with others is through a screen, social engagement becomes much more similar to parasocial engagement. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parasocial_breakup |
When utilizing these mediated communications, users can perceive greater distance (as compared to real-life interactions), leading them to cognitively process their actual friends in a similar manner as liked media persona. This could lead to processing parasocial interactions with greater intention, which could develop into greater and stronger parasocial relationships. Another explanation would be that individuals who need higher amounts social connection increased their parasocial relationships, while still maintaining their social relationships online. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parasocial_breakup |
Individuals who spent more time in mediated communication with real-life friends were likely to experience growth in their parasocial relationships, especially if the media persona would perform behaviors that increase their parasocial interaction potential. Parasocial interaction potential is how likely a media persona is to “engage” their audience in interactions. This explanation would appear to refute the parasocial compensation hypothesis, suggesting that parasocial relationship cannot function as an alternative to social relationships, rather as an accompaniment. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parasocial_breakup |
However, this explanation is weakened when considering how parasocial interaction potential should have had moderating influence, which was not seen. When people experienced a decrease in face-to-face interactions, they experienced a growth in their parasocial relationships, regardless of the parasocial interaction potential of the media persona with whom they experienced growth. Therefore, the parasocial compensation hypothesis is still supported; during a time when options and alternatives were limited, when individuals experienced less face-to-face interactions with friends, they may have attempted to replace it with parasocial interactions, regardless of the parasocial interaction potential of their liked media persona. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parasocial_breakup |
During this time, people spent more time in their parasocial interactions than they did in face-to-face social interactions. Parasocial relationships grew, especially if people were spending less time in their real-life social relationships, supporting the compensation function of parasocial relationships. Parasocial relationships could be particularly important for social connection during critical times such as the global pandemic. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parasocial_breakup |
There may be other cases where individuals are experiencing “social deficiencies” with their real-life friends, or when they are not able to be around many “like-others” where parasocial relationships may function in similar capacities. The parasocial compensation hypothesis highlights how much value these type of relationships could have. Overall, parasocial relationships with media personae grew during the global pandemic, especially for those who may have used these types of interactions to make up for the “social deficiencies” that were caused by COVID-19. Our parasocial relationships began to look like our social relationships, which could have increased how much value we place on parasocial relationships, viewing them as important parts of people's social networks during the pandemic. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parasocial_breakup |
The Contarini–Rosselli map of 1506 was the first printed world map showing the New World. The Contarini–Rosselli map was designed by Giovanni Matteo Contarini and engraved by Francesco Rosselli. It is a copper-engraved map and was published in Venice or Florence in 1506. The only surviving copy is in the British Library. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contarini–Rosselli_map |
There had been many voyages of discovery in the immediately preceding years: Dias’ rounding of Africa (1487) the discovery of Newfoundland by John Cabot (1497) Vasco da Gama's travel to India (1499) the explorations of the Caribbean and South America by Columbus (1492–93, 1493–94, 1498, 1502–04) visits to the Caribbean and South America by Vespucci (1499, 1501–02)Although there had been maps created after these voyages, such as Juan de la Cosa's map of the world in 1500 (based on Columbus' second voyage) and the Cantino world map (circa 1502), the information on these maps was closely guarded. These maps were commissioned by the Portuguese and Spanish governments, which wanted to create trade monopolies over the regions they depicted. The royal powers worried that leaked information about geography could make it easier for other nations to challenge their supremacy. Often a limited number of copies was made, to be held under lock and key. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contarini–Rosselli_map |
This situation changed drastically from 1506 to 1507 when three separate efforts to produce world maps were published. The Contarini-Rosselli map of 1506 (now in the British Library) and Martin Waldseemüller's map of the world and globe of 1507 were influential, but not very widely published. There is only one original copy of each in existence, and both of these copies were discovered in the 20th century. By contrast, Johannes Ruysch's 1507 map of the world was much more widely published and many copies were produced and still exist. It therefore had a very large influence. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contarini–Rosselli_map |
In artificial intelligence, apprenticeship learning (or learning from demonstration or imitation learning) is the process of learning by observing an expert. It can be viewed as a form of supervised learning, where the training dataset consists of task executions by a demonstration teacher. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apprenticeship_learning |
Mapping methods try to mimic the expert by forming a direct mapping either from states to actions, or from states to reward values. For example, in 2002 researchers used such an approach to teach an AIBO robot basic soccer skills. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apprenticeship_learning |
Inverse reinforcement learning (IRL) is the process of deriving a reward function from observed behavior. While ordinary "reinforcement learning" involves using rewards and punishments to learn behavior, in IRL the direction is reversed, and a robot observes a person's behavior to figure out what goal that behavior seems to be trying to achieve. The IRL problem can be defined as: Given 1) measurements of an agent's behaviour over time, in a variety of circumstances; 2) measurements of the sensory inputs to that agent; 3) a model of the physical environment (including the agent's body): Determine the reward function that the agent is optimizing. IRL researcher Stuart J. Russell proposes that IRL might be used to observe humans and attempt to codify their complex "ethical values", in an effort to create "ethical robots" that might someday know "not to cook your cat" without needing to be explicitly told. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apprenticeship_learning |
The scenario can be modeled as a "cooperative inverse reinforcement learning game", where a "person" player and a "robot" player cooperate to secure the person's implicit goals, despite these goals not being explicitly known by either the person nor the robot.In 2017, OpenAI and DeepMind applied deep learning to the cooperative inverse reinforcement learning in simple domains such as Atari games and straightforward robot tasks such as backflips. The human role was limited to answering queries from the robot as to which of two different actions were preferred. The researchers found evidence that the techniques may be economically scalable to modern systems.Apprenticeship via inverse reinforcement learning (AIRP) was developed by in 2004 Pieter Abbeel, Professor in Berkeley's EECS department, and Andrew Ng, Associate Professor in Stanford University's Computer Science Department. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apprenticeship_learning |
AIRP deals with "Markov decision process where we are not explicitly given a reward function, but where instead we can observe an expert demonstrating the task that we want to learn to perform". AIRP has been used to model reward functions of highly dynamic scenarios where there is no obvious reward function intuitively. Take the task of driving for example, there are many different objectives working simultaneously - such as maintaining safe following distance, a good speed, not changing lanes too often, etc. This task, may seem easy at first glance, but a trivial reward function may not converge to the policy wanted. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apprenticeship_learning |
One domain where AIRP has been used extensively is helicopter control. While simple trajectories can be intuitively derived, complicated tasks like aerobatics for shows has been successful. These include aerobatic maneuvers like - in-place flips, in-place rolls, loops, hurricanes and even auto-rotation landings. This work was developed by Pieter Abbeel, Adam Coates, and Andrew Ng - "Autonomous Helicopter Aerobatics through Apprenticeship Learning" | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apprenticeship_learning |
System models try to mimic the expert by modeling world dynamics. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apprenticeship_learning |
The system learns rules to associate preconditions and postconditions with each action. In one 1994 demonstration, a humanoid learns a generalized plan from only two demonstrations of a repetitive ball collection task. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apprenticeship_learning |
Learning from demonstration is often explained from a perspective that the working Robot-control-system is available and the human-demonstrator is using it. And indeed, if the software works, the Human operator takes the robot-arm, makes a move with it, and the robot will reproduce the action later. For example, he teaches the robot-arm how to put a cup under a coffeemaker and press the start-button. In the replay phase, the robot is imitating this behavior 1:1. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apprenticeship_learning |
But that is not how the system works internally; it is only what the audience can observe. In reality, Learning from demonstration is much more complex. One of the first works on learning by robot apprentices (anthropomorphic robots learning by imitation) was Adrian Stoica's PhD thesis in 1995.In 1997, robotics expert Stefan Schaal was working on the Sarcos robot-arm. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apprenticeship_learning |
The goal was simple: solve the pendulum swingup task. The robot itself can execute a movement, and as a result, the pendulum is moving. The problem is, that it is unclear what actions will result into which movement. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apprenticeship_learning |
It is an Optimal control-problem which can be described with mathematical formulas but is hard to solve. The idea from Schaal was, not to use a Brute-force solver but record the movements of a human-demonstration. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apprenticeship_learning |
The angle of the pendulum is logged over three seconds at the y-axis. This results into a diagram which produces a pattern. In computer animation, the principle is called spline animation. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apprenticeship_learning |
That means, on the x-axis the time is given, for example 0.5 seconds, 1.0 seconds, 1.5 seconds, while on the y-axis is the variable given. In most cases it's the position of an object. In the inverted pendulum it is the angle. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apprenticeship_learning |
The overall task consists of two parts: recording the angle over time and reproducing the recorded motion. The reproducing step is surprisingly simple. As an input we know, in which time step which angle the pendulum must have. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apprenticeship_learning |
Bringing the system to a state is called “Tracking control” or PID control. That means, we have a trajectory over time, and must find control actions to map the system to this trajectory. Other authors call the principle “steering behavior”, because the aim is to bring a robot to a given line. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apprenticeship_learning |
The International Standard Authority Data Number (ISADN) was a registry proposed by the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA) to provide and maintain unique identifiers for entities described in authority data. Having such a unique number would have the benefits of being language-independent and system-independent.Francoise Bourdon was a major proponent of such a standard, proposing a structure for the ISADN and recommending that the number uniquely identify authority records, rather than their subjects.A 1989 article by Delsey described the work on the IFLA Working Group on an International Authority System, spending a good portion of time on conceptualizing an international standard number "that will facilitate the linkage of variant authorities for the same identity." Their discussion was very complex in its discussion of which agencies would actually assign such numbers. For example, a national library might be tasked with assigning identifiers to authors within its country, but this would lead to duplicate identifiers for authority data that describe transnational people.The project was ultimately determined to be unfeasible. Tillett suggested that the cluster identifiers used by the Virtual International Authority File might meet the needs expressed in the proposal.The concept of an ISADN continues to be relevant to the information science community, as it could be a great help in the problem of measuring an individual author's research output. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Standard_Authority_Data_Number |
In linguistics, coercion is a term applied to a process of reinterpretation triggered by a mismatch between the semantic properties of a selector and the semantic properties of the selected element. As Catalina Ramírez explains it, this phenomenon is called coercion because the process forces meaning into a lexical phrase where there is otherwise a discrepancy of the semantic aspects of the phrase. The term was first used in the semantic literature in 1988 by Marc Moens and Mark Steedman, who adopted it due to its "loose analogy with type-coercion in programming languages.” In his written framework of the generative lexicon (a formal compositional approach to lexical semantics), Pustejovsky (1995:111) defines coercion as "a semantic operation that converts an argument to the type which is expected by a function, where it would otherwise result in a type error." Coercion in the Pustejovsky framework refers to both complement coercion and aspectual coercion. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coercion_(linguistics) |
Complement coercion involves a mismatch of semantic meaning between lexical items, while aspectual coercion involves a mismatch of temporality between lexical items.A commonly used example of complement coercion is the sentence "I began the book.” The phrase "I began" is assumed to be a selector which requires the following complement to denote an event, but "the book" denotes a noun phrase, not an event. So, as a result of coercion, "I began" forces “the book" from a simple noun phrase to an event involving that noun, causing the sentence to be interpreted to mean (most likely) "I began to read the book" or "I began to write the book. "An example of aspectual coercion involving temporal connectives is "Let's leave after dessert" (Pustejovsky 1995:230). | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coercion_(linguistics) |
Another example of aspectual coercion from psycholinguistics research is the sentence "The tiger jumped for an hour," where the prepositional phrase "for an hour" coerces the lexical meaning of "jumped" to be iterative across the entire duration, instead of having occurred only once.Coercion is a well-discussed topic in the field of linguistics, especially in semantics and construction grammar. It is also explored in cognitive linguistics. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coercion_(linguistics) |
An example is Yao-Ying Lai’s 2017 study on the effects of coercion on mental processing; results showed that phrases involving aspectual words (such as “start”) required longer reading times to understand than did phrases with psychological words (such as “enjoy” and “love”). Currently, there is debate surrounding the proper approach to coercion in linguistics, including systemic coercion versus language-user coercion and a semantic perspective versus pragmatic perspective, among others. == References == | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coercion_(linguistics) |
Figurae (singular, figura) are the non-signifying constituents of signifiers (signs). For example, letters of the alphabet are the figurae that comprise a written word (signifier). In the semiotic language of Louis Hjelmslev, the coiner of this term, figurae serve only to distinguish elements (e.g. words) of the expression plane from each other, independently from the content plane. That is, the letter B, in the written word expression "bat", distinguishes "bat" from the word "sat", but neither B nor S bears meaning on its own. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Figurae |
On the other hand, the constituents "foot" and "ball" both bear their own individual meanings, such that in the word "football", they cannot be considered figurae, although their individual letters can. Hjelmslev states that in a given language a "legion of signs" can be constructed with a "handful of figurae" through ever new arrangements of them. Linguists often use the terms phonemes and morphemes to refer, respectively, to the figurae and the signifiers of human languages. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Figurae |
The division of the stream of speech into meaningful morphemes plus their further subdivision into meaningless elements is known as the double articulation. This duality of patterning of language is one of the few facts of language which most schools of linguistics can agree on. Occasionally, two morphemes can combine in an arbitrary way into a new morpheme, as in double names such as Mary-Alice, John-Paul, and Sarah-Jean, creating a kind of triple articulation. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Figurae |
English speakers recognize Mary and Alice as parts of the name Mary-Alice, yet they understand that a woman of that name is in no way a combination of two other women. But neither are double given names typical of English, nor are surnames meaningless, since surnames usually identify a family relationship. As far as the combination of meaningful elements is concerned, there is much less agreement on what constitutes a syntagm (e.g. foot-ball, I-am) and whether any such syntax is universal. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Figurae |
In theory, any sign could be composed of figurae, but care must be taken in distinguishing between the control-number-like function of figurae (as in the individual digits of a telephone extension) and the syntax-like function of meaning constituents (as in the area code of a full telephone number). For example, the symbols for the lines of the New York City subway system are composed of very elementary parts, e.g., letters or numbers and colors. While the assignment of letters to trains is arbitrary, and colors are arbitrarily assigned to various avenues in Manhattan, the combination of a letter or number and color is not arbitrary. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Figurae |
That is, the symbol for the A Train has to be blue, since it runs along Eighth Avenue and all other Eighth Avenue train symbols are blue. Therefore, these colors cannot be considered figurae. On the other hand, the flags of a dozen countries consist of three horizontal bars, distinguished by their colors. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Figurae |
It can be said that the colors and bars form a system of signifiers, consisting of the color figurae in a vertical order. For example, the flag of Russia is made up of a white, a blue, and a red bar, from top to bottom, whereas the flag of Estonia consists of a blue, a black and a white bar. From the point of view of a vexillologist, the colors have no meaning until they are grouped together and form the national symbol. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Figurae |
Although white, blue and red may be "national colors" of Russia, combined in a different order they form the flag of Luxembourg. In reality, most national flags do not conform to the three-horizontal-band pattern. Furthermore, national flags vary somewhat in their horizontal and vertical proportions, and shades of colors can differ. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Figurae |
Nevertheless, this logical analysis of flags into horizontal-color-bar figurae, though not exact, would probably be arrived at by almost anyone comparing these 12 national symbols. But it is also possible to over-analyze signs. For example, a television picture of a flag would consist of thousands of meaningless pixels. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Figurae |
A recording of speech could be digitalized on a CD into millions of meaningless bits. Neither of these mechanical divisions could be considered figurae. It would seem, then, that since signs are defined as entities recognized by sentient beings (including many animal species), the constituents of signs, figurae, must also be easily recognizable as entities, even though they have no meaning in themselves. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Figurae |
It probably requires lot of specialization or intelligence to mentally process figurae, since it demands not only the disassociation of the characteristics of a symbol with those of its referent, but this disassociation has to be repeated for each figura that comprises the arbitrary symbol. Figurae have not yet been recognized in any non-human natural communication system. Although the honeybee waggle dance may involve some arbitrary symbols, they are combined with non-arbitrary ones, much like the subway line symbols. == References == | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Figurae |
In dentistry, crown refers to the anatomical area of teeth, usually covered by enamel. The crown is usually visible in the mouth after developing below the gingiva and then erupting into place. If part of the tooth gets chipped or broken, a dentist can apply an artificial crown. Artificial crowns are used most commonly to entirely cover a damaged tooth or to cover an implant. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crown_(tooth) |
Bridges are also used to cover a space if one or more teeth is missing. They are cemented to natural teeth or implants surrounding the space where the tooth once stood. There are various materials that can be used including a type of cement or stainless steel. The cement crowns look like regular teeth while the stainless steel crowns are silver or gold. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crown_(tooth) |
A plant epithet is a name used to label a person or group, by association with some perceived quality of a plant. Vegetable epithets may be pejorative, such as turnip, readily giving offence, or positive, such as rose or other flowers implying beauty. Tree and flower forenames such as Hazel, Holly, Jasmine and Rose are commonly given to girls. Tree surnames such as Oakes (Oak) and Nash (Ash) are toponymic, given to a person in the Middle Ages who lived in a place near a conspicuous tree. A few plant surnames such as Pease and Onions are metonymic, for sellers of peas and onions respectively. Finally, plant surnames are sometimes emblematic, as in the name Rose, used as a family emblem. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plant_epithet |
Plant epithets may be pejorative, used humorously and sometimes offensively. Some plant epithets are used directly as insults, as when people are called turnips, potatoes, or cabbages. When the England football team lost to Sweden under Graham Taylor, The Sun newspaper led with the headline "Swedes 2 Turnips 1", swede being a pun on a particular vegetable, and turnip being an insult. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plant_epithet |
In English, the collective term vegetable is also pejorative. Plant epithets are used around the world, but the choice of plants and their meanings vary. Thus in China, "stupid melon" is used as an insult. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plant_epithet |
In Britain, coconut is sometimes used by black people to insult other people of colour; the term indicates betrayal, as coconuts are brown on the outside but white on the inside. Trembling or quaking like an aspen leaf means shaking with fear; this may be descriptive or pejorative, and is recorded from around 1700 onwards, starting with Edward Taylor's Poems. In 2022, the British prime minister Liz Truss was described as "Lettuce Liz" and "The Iceberg Lady", her short term in office compared unfavourably to the shelf life of a lettuce. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plant_epithet |
In contrast to vegetable epithets, flower and tree names are generally positive. "English rose" has traditionally been used to describe an attractive English woman with a fair complexion. An early documented usage is in Basil Hood's 1902 comic opera Merrie England, while in modern times, the actress Gemma Arterton has been so described.Flower and tree names are used in many countries for girls; examples in English include Bryony, Daisy, Iris, Hazel, Heather, Holly, Hyacinth, Jasmine, Lily, Rose, and Violet. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plant_epithet |
Forms of the generic term flower are also popular in English as in other languages, including for example Fleur, Flora, Florence and Flores. English flower names are less common for boys, but include Hawthorn; in the form of May, the same flower is used as a girl's name. Laurel, for a victor's wreath made of the sweet bay or laurel, with feminine forms such as Laura, is used for both boys and girls. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plant_epithet |
People acquired plant surnames in the Middle Ages for different reasons. Toponymic surnames were given to people who lived by a significant feature such as a large isolated tree, a group of trees, or a wood: or, very often, in a village beside such a feature. Metonymic surnames, on the other hand, denoted a person's profession, and include Pease, for a seller of peas, and Onions, for a seller of onions (though some people with that surname got it from the Old Welsh name Enniaum). Plant or Plante itself may be a metonym (gardener), as with Plantebene (a grower of beans, 1199) and Planterose (a grower of roses, 1221), a metaphor meaning a branch of a family, or a toponym, as with de la Plaunt (1273) and de Plantes (1275, 1282), from a place in France such as le Plantis (Orne), or from a planted place such as a vineyard or orchard.Toponymic surnames include Oak, with variants such as Oake, Oke, Oakes, Noke and Roke since 1273, Ash, with variations such as Ashe, Asche, Aish, Esch and Nash since 1221, and Birch or Birchwood, since 1182. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plant_epithet |
Hazel is recorded in many toponymic surnames (sometimes via villages named for the tree), including Hazel itself from 1182, Hazelwood/Aizlewood, Hazelton, Hazelhurst, Hazelgrove, Hazelden and Heseltine. Surnames such as Hollies and Hollin(g)s, since 1275, mean a person who lived by a holly or holm oak tree. Surnames such as Plumtree, Plumpton, and Plumstead denote people who lived in places by a plum tree or orchard. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plant_epithet |
Similarly, Appleby, Appleton, Applegarth and Appleyard name people who lived by an apple orchard, or in villages in Cheshire, Cumbria, Kent and Yorkshire which were named for their apple orchards. Surnames including Apps, Asp, Epps and Hesp record that a person lived by an aspen tree, the letters often being swapped over.A third source of plant names is their use as emblems, as in the surnames Rose, Royce, and Pluckrose, all meaning a person who used the rose as their family emblem. The English royal Plantagenet dynasty appears to have derived its name from the use of a sprig of broom or planta genista as an emblem. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plant_epithet |
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