para-social interaction a way of describing the interaction between the broadcast media and their audiences. The notion is particularly apposite in the case of television where the television personality or performer may seem to be directly addressing the audience and where the television image makes available to the audience details of expression and gesture that typically function as important cues in real time, face-to-face social interaction. Indeed, both radio and television have fostered a way of talking, apparently personal and private, even though to large anonymous audiences, as part of an illusion of ‘intimacy at a distance’. mmo
