Development of the Parasocial Identifier for Social Media

Since the introduction of radio and television, fans have had a connection to those they know in the media. These connections are called âparasocial relationshipsâ and they are one-sided relationships, usually between a fan and a celebrity, that is usually not face-to-face. With the advent of social media, any person, or company, can become a celebrity and gain fans. In this project, the intern will work with a marketing company to develop computer algorithms to automatically analyse comments on Instagram and determine how many account followers have parasocial relationships with the account owner. He will then develop a way to summarize these results in a parasocial identifier (PSI) score.

Faculty Supervisor:

Terry (Fan) Jiang;Kafui Monu

Student:

Colton Aarts

Partner:

Splash Media Group

Discipline:

Computer science

Sector:

Agriculture

University:

Program: