Scratch that last post. IIs and parasocial interactions are two different things (and still debated by some seminarians). IIs are imagined interactions, discussions with people in our heads with REAL people, with more of a practical purpose. Such purposes include rehearsal, learning about ourselves, planning, catharsis, and so forth. Parasocial interactions, however, may serve some of the same purposes, but are more related to fantasy. Specifically, they refer to interactions with people we don’t know or (sports legends, politicians) and particularly, fictional characters. What I claimed were interactions with the Stargate SG1 characters were actually parasocial interations rather than imagined interactions.
There may be a gap in the theoretical literature between the two, but my gut feeling tells me parasocial interactions have different functions, namely alleviating boredom, possibly managing mood, and a whole variety of things that aren’t necessarily geared to prepare us for conversation like IIs. Horton and Woll (1950something) got this line of research going and it’s on my reading list, but I haven’t looked into the functions and characteristics of such interactions yet. They are, however, on my comps reading list.
If nobody has done as thorough a job as Honeycutt (2003, 2010, etc.) has with IIs in developing theoretical axioms for parasocial relationships, then I might just have to consider it as a dissertation idea.
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