Exploring everyday media use Viewing motives, multitasking, and viewing duration as potential drivers of parasocial interactions and relationships

Parasocial interactions (PSIs) and relationships (PSRs) are prevalent in media use. They are influenced by media characters, viewers, the viewing situation, and combinations thereof. While characteristics of media characters and viewers have been studied extensively, little is known about the impact of situational factors tied to viewing sessions in viewers’ everyday media use. Situational factors potentially vary in each viewing situation. Especially for PSIs, a reception phenomenon bound to a specific viewing situation, these factors should be highly relevant. This preregistered study analyzed situational viewing motives, content-related and unrelated multitasking, and different forms of viewing session extensiveness (duration, number of episodes watched, and watching intensity) as potential situational drivers for PSIs and PSRs. The study applies an innovative multimethod design combining usage tracking of 95 participants and experience sampling surveys (N = 693) triggered before and after each viewing session. Through this new approach to analyzing PSIs/PSRs within everyday viewing sessions, influences on PSIs and PSRs were covered close to viewers’ everyday media use, resulting in high external validity. The results show that PSIs depend on viewers’ motives for social interaction and escapism, engagement in nonmedia multitasking, and self-assessed viewing intensity. None of the analyzed situational factors influenced viewers’ PSRs.