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Impact of Motivation, Attraction, and Parasocial Interaction on Talk Radio Listening.
Talk radio offers a mediated interpersonal communication experience for its audience. It provides listeners with a sense of personal contact and a forum to discuss and to learn about societal issues. Call-in talk radio, for example, accounts for 1 in 10 radio stations in the U.S. (Fineman, 1993), and its possible impact on political processes has been controversial. Some have argued that "talk show democracy" has altered how people obtain political information (e.g., Fineman, 1993). Nearly 1 in 5 adult listeners have reported listening to a call-in political radio program more than once a week; these listeners are politically active and regular consumers of news media (Annenberg Public Policy Center, 1996).
In this study we sought to examine several outcomes of the process of listening to public affairs call-in talk radio. We focused on how motivation, interpersonal attraction, and parasocial interaction explained talk radio exposure, information acquisition, and perceived attitudinal and behavioral effects. Talk Radio's Social Presence Mass media impact our daily lives and help frame reality (Gitlin, 1980). Consumers' choices and interpretations of content, though, mediate this influence, so that impact reflects an interactive relationship (McQuail, 1975). This is especially true for media that possess a substantial degree of social presence such as talk radio. Social presence refers to the interpersonal nature of a communication channel (Short, Williams, & Christie, 1976; Williams, Rice, & Rogers, 1988). Perse and Courtright (1993) found that audio channels were second only to interpersonal channels in the degree of social presence. The perceived distance between radio listeners and their programs was closer or more immediate than for other media. Talk radio provides an accessible and conducive alternative to interpersonal interaction, especially for those listeners who find face-to-face interaction to be a less rewarding experience (Armstrong & Rubin, 1989). Both calling and listening to talk radio fulfill needs for interpersonal interaction (Avery, 1990). Although there are many hybrid formats, talk radio is characterized by conversation initiated by a program host with listeners who may telephone to discuss such topics as politics, sports, finances, personal problems, or current events. Ellis, Hawes, and Avery (1981) identified features that contribute to a unique set of rules for talk radio conversation as compared with face-to-face and telephone conversation. These include a lack of visual cues and awareness by both parties that the conversation is public. Talk radio, then, is available to mass audiences and amenable to interpersonal processes. Munson (1993) suggested that talk shows reconcile mass culture and the individual. In this sense, b...See the full content of this document
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