I came across it on the internet news. “A citizen in Kocaeli commemorated Çakır, the unforgettable actor of the TV series Kurtar Vadisi, with a newspaper advertisement on the anniversary of his death in the TV series (CHA, 2008).” The death date of the Bihter character of the Aşkı Memnu series is still among the most talked about on social media as the anniversary of his death every year. “The anniversary of Bihter Ziyagil's death and the scene of her death on Twitter were on the agenda again as every year (Acar, 2022).” We all have sometimes identified with a character in the movies or TV series we watch, put ourselves in his place and feel happy when he is happy for some reason, and we are sad because he is sad. At the end of the movie, we sat and cried when our favorite character died. Inevitably, we have established a bond with that character.
Identification and role modeling are very important in terms of development. As a matter of fact, Bandura, one of the important names of learning psychology, mentions that learning through identification and role modeling has an important effect on the development of the child in social learning theory. In ego psychology, identification emerges as an important defense mechanism. Individuals identify with themselves the people they find successful and take as role models. They take the people they take as role models and find successful, and they identify with these people. In today's technology, they can find it in the media character from time to time. There is a character on the stage and he can do what the person wants to do or not, what he wants to achieve or not.
Advancing technology and individualized people can transform this state of identification from the natural environment to the media. The media presents the characters in ideals to individuals. In this case, the individual can establish a symbolic relationship with the media character. The name of this relationship in the literature is parasocial interaction. The concept of parasocial interaction was first used by Horton and Wohl in 1956 (Batigün and Sunal, 2017). There are many definitions in the literature regarding parasocial interaction. Parasocial interaction is a one-way symbolic interaction in which the individual is influenced by the media character and the media character is not aware of this influence (Orhan & Taştan, 2019). Parasocial interaction, fictional character of individuals sweats and the interaction with the scenarios these characters live in (Bulut, 2020). Parasocial interaction can sometimes be a series of characters and sometimes social media phenomena.
The culture of individuals is effective in the quality of parasocial interaction (Kaya, 2020). Parasocial interaction can be established with many characters depending on factors such as the education level, socio-cultural life, socioeconomic level of the individual (Guven, 2019). Individuals can interact with characters similar to themselves (Arslan, 2013). Individuals internalize and adopt these characters, with whom they have a symbolic relationship, as if they were from their families, friends and social circles. In addition, the most important factor in establishing parasocial interaction is the individual's trust in the media character (Aytulun & Sunal, 2020). Parasocial interaction has a great impact on the existing values of individuals (Teke et al., 2021). In addition, as parasocial interaction levels increase, attachment to serials also increases (Aytulun, 2015).
In parasocial interaction, individuals enjoy watching the experiences of the media characters they like, evaluate what they do and say, and always want to watch the characters they like (Aytulun, 2015). The strength of the parasocial relationship is determined depending on the meanings of the individual's understanding or internal processes (as cited in Orhan and Taştan, 2019). If the character with whom he communicates has a meaningful place in the life of the individual, the person can give concrete emotional reactions when a bad event happens to the character or the character dies (Orhan, 2018).
The term parasocial interaction was first used by Horton and Wolh ( 1956) (as cited in Chandley and Munder, Güven,2019). The literature is generally handled in a positive way and it is mostly established with the individual and his favorite fictional media character, but it is stated in some studies that it is also established with characters he does not like or is neutral (Arslan, 2013).
The character with parasocial interaction is an ideal character who, as always, from past to present, finds himself in what he does, leads the masses and acts heroically (Guven,2019). In addition, the attractiveness of the fictional media character p it is effective in establishing intersocial interaction (Arslan, 2013). Although parasocial interaction is seen as one-way, it creates an emotional interaction with the media character (Aytulun & Sunal, 2020). With the long duration of the parasocial interaction, the parasocial relationship emerges (as cited by Schmid and Klimmt. Aytulun and Sunal,2020).
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