The fan group that I have chosen to study belongs to the celebrity Justin Bieber. Justin Bieber is a Canadian singer and songwriter who was discovered by his now manager Scooter Braun, after his mother, Patricia Mallette, posted videos of Justin singing onto Youtube in early 2007. He rose to stardom after the release of his first single, One Time, in 2009. Justin’s fans are known as Beliebers, “believers of Justin Bieber”. They consist mostly of teenage girls.
The fan that I have chosen to study is a 19 year old girl called Vidhya who is currently studying in Ngee Ann Polytechnic. She has been a Justin Bieber fan since 2010. She discovered Justin Bieber when her secondary school played one of his songs during recess time. At that point she was thinking, “Who is this girl? …show more content…
She also pauses the video when she thinks Justin looks good to take a picture to add it to her “Screenshot of Justin Bieber” Album.
In her free time, Vidhya goes on to google and types “Justin Bieber” in the search bar to read up on all the latest happenings in Bieber’s life. She also stalks and follows close friends of Justin Bieber which include Kylie Jenner, Kendall Jenner, Selena Gomez and Hailey Baldwin. When she is sad or happy, she listens to Justin’s music as it makes her feel better.
After analyzing Vidhya’s psychology and behaviour, I believe the following factors also encourage a parasocial relationship between Vidhya and Justin. They are wishful identification, physical, social and task attractiveness. Wishful Identification is a psychological process where a person has the desire or tries to become another person (Hoffner & Buchanan, 2005). Whereas physical attractiveness is the media characters physical appearance, social attractiveness is the personality of the media character and task attractiveness is the competence and success of the media character (McCroskey & McCain,
The fan that I have chosen to study is a 19 year old girl called Vidhya who is currently studying in Ngee Ann Polytechnic. She has been a Justin Bieber fan since 2010. She discovered Justin Bieber when her secondary school played one of his songs during recess time. At that point she was thinking, “Who is this girl? …show more content…
She also pauses the video when she thinks Justin looks good to take a picture to add it to her “Screenshot of Justin Bieber” Album.
In her free time, Vidhya goes on to google and types “Justin Bieber” in the search bar to read up on all the latest happenings in Bieber’s life. She also stalks and follows close friends of Justin Bieber which include Kylie Jenner, Kendall Jenner, Selena Gomez and Hailey Baldwin. When she is sad or happy, she listens to Justin’s music as it makes her feel better.
After analyzing Vidhya’s psychology and behaviour, I believe the following factors also encourage a parasocial relationship between Vidhya and Justin. They are wishful identification, physical, social and task attractiveness. Wishful Identification is a psychological process where a person has the desire or tries to become another person (Hoffner & Buchanan, 2005). Whereas physical attractiveness is the media characters physical appearance, social attractiveness is the personality of the media character and task attractiveness is the competence and success of the media character (McCroskey & McCain,