The impact of artist-audience parasocial relationships on engagement in co-creation

Abstract

The music industry has recently undergone paradigm-shifting changes, leading to the transformation of the conventional manager-employee dyads into triads involving the audience – with the emergence and democratization of the consumer-artist role. Consumers take a more active part in formerly internal tasks of the value chain, engaging in co-creation. Parasocial relationships are one-sided socio-emotional bonds with media personae, revolutionized by Internet communication technologies’ interactive capabilities. Artist-audience connections are demonstrably distinct from other parasocial relationships. This thesis provides a first attempt to investigate the impact of artist-audience parasocial relationships on engagement in co creation, through an experimental approach collecting data from 201 individuals.