Loneliness, Escapism, and Identification With Media Characters: An Exploration of the Psychological Factors Underlying Binge-Watching Tendency

Nowadays, binge-watching (i.e., watching multiple episodes of a TV series in one session) has become a widespread practice of media consumption, raising concerns about its negative outcomes. Nevertheless, previous research has overlooked the underlying psychological mechanisms leading to binge-watching. In the present work, we investigated some of the psychological variables that could favor binge-watching tendencies in a sample of TV series viewers (N = 196). To this aim, psychological determinants of problematic digital technologies usage (i.e., feelings of loneliness), as well as some of the mechanisms related to the enjoyment of media contents (i.e., escapism and the identification with media characters), were considered as predictors of the tendency to binge-watch. Results indicated that higher feelings of loneliness were associated with higher levels of problematic digital technologies usage. Additionally, direct and indirect effects showed that only escapism – out of the four dimensions measuring the problematic use of Internet-related technologies – predicted participants’ stronger identification with media characters, which in turn promoted greater binge-watching tendencies. Overall, we suggest that binge-watching could be interpreted as a coping strategy for media escapists, who enjoy TV series as a privileged online space in which the need to escape finds its fulfillment, allowing them to manage loneliness by identifying with a fictitious character.

Identification with Media Characters Across the Lifespan

Identification is a construct rooted in psychoanalysis, where it was originally thought of as a defense mechanism (Freud, 1940/1949, p. 98). In more recent literature, identification (specifically, identifying with another person) is considered a process that requires both external (i.e., behavioral imitation) and internal (i.e., vicarious experience, imagination) mechanisms (Wollheim, 1974). Previous research has examined how humans come to know things about themselves over the lifespan, thus forming their own views about themselves; in other words, forming a self-identity. When examining the research on identity development, identifying with other people, and identifying with media characters, the development of own identity seems to parallel how humans relate to media characters at each stage of life. The purpose of this review is to: (1) examine identity as a construct; (2) examine identity development at each major stage of life; (3) bring attention to the problems media research tends to have when operationalizing the ways in which people can relate and react to media characters; and (4) examine how identifying and relating to media characters changes over the lifespan.

Intimacy despite distance: The dark triad and romantic parasocial interactions

Individuals who score high on the dark triad of socially aversive traits—narcissism, psychopathy, and Machiavellianism—are prone to engage in short-term, non-committal romantic encounters. However, little is known about the transferability of this behavior to these individuals’ intimate interactions with media characters (i.e., romantic parasocial interactions). To close this research gap, we conducted a two-level-between-subjects experiment with young adults in Germany ( N = 116). Our results reveal that, although individuals who score high on the dark triad traits are particularly prone to engage in the specific sub-dimensions emotional love and responses to the media character of romantic parasocial interactions, they are not particularly prone to experience physical love for the media character. Moreover, our results show an alternative negative effect operating through an enhanced tendency to perceive a narrative as “corny” among those with Machiavellian and psychopathic personalities. To underline the similarity between parasocial and real-life romantic interactions, we further investigated the relationship between romantic parasocial interactions and an individual’s perceived relatedness gratification. The results suggest that interacting with and responding to the media character enhance perceived relatedness gratification, but that the romantic connotation of the parasocial interaction is not crucial for the feeling of relatedness during media reception.

Audience perceptions of female characters in Chinese documentaries

Media companies are more aware today than ever before of the impact of visual products. How audiences cognitively and emotionally connect with documentary content has become an area worth studying. With scholars' perspectives moving from passive audience exposure to active audience reception, this study hoped to bring insights into how audiences emotionally and cognitively relate to female characters. Using two Chinese independent documentaries, Still Tomorrow and Small Talk, the study employs a between-subjects factorial experimental design to examine audiences' perceptions of female characters. The purpose of this research is to examine audience perceptions within a crosscultural context, as the researcher compared audience perceptions of female characters based on the audience members' cultural backgrounds. This study supports that the documentary viewing experience evokes audiences' concerns about gender equality issues. Building on the theoretical concept of identification, the study finds that empathizing with media characters could increase audiences' awareness of gender issues portrayed in the documentary. From a pragmatic perceptive, the researcher provided some insights for media producers and documentary filmmakers in terms of documentary character construction and documentary narratives, with a comparison between two characters' narratives.

Stepping In and Out of Media Characters

Identification with media characters is a highly prevalent phenomenon in media entertainment. Audience members may take the perspective of—or become experientially “one with” the personae of various kinds of entertainment media, including movie and novel protagonists, video game avatars, or talk show hosts. After briefly reviewing past theoretical work on identification, we introduce a new framework that contextualizes identification within a set of six different modes of audience positioning toward media characters. We suggest interindividual and intermessage differences as well as intraindividual dynamics in audience positionings, with identification being a mode that is bound to particular conditions, including an experience of transportation. The framework may harmonize discrepant past propositions on audience responses to media characters, pave the way for improved measurement of these responses in future experiments across different media and message genres, and advance conceptualizations of the links between identification, hedonic as well as eudaimonic entertainment outcomes.

ETHNOLECT OF GERMAN AND ITS VARIANTS

The object of consideration in the paper are innovative styles of communication within and across national, ethnic and social groups. The active exploring of this language phenomenon is particularly important for German and Turkish, two languages that have been in close contact in the quarters of large cities of Germany where migrants of several generation are concentrated for more than 40 years. Nowadays, this style of speech has gone beyond the urban areas and has turned into a new way of speaking used by young native German people. The authors investigate social conditions of the formation, as well as the peculiarities of this social-group dialect (sociolect). Particular attention is paid to the specific character and homogeneity of its morphosyntactic, phonetic and lexical structures. The label ethnolect is indifferent to the ethnicity of its purported speakers, but primarily indexes their difference, i.e. heteroethnic relation to the imagined majority group. Media shows contribute to its development into a kind of secondary and further into a tertiary version of the language. The certain German-Turkish language hybrid is used consciously and intentionally. This new code is created as a metalinguistic symbol of identity and is used to designate some media characters.