Abstract
Abstract This entry provides a brief introduction to health communication theory on parasocial interaction, parasocial relationships, and identification. Each of these phenomena constitutes a type of cognitive involvement with a media character or celebrity. Health communication practitioners can harness people's parasocial interactions, parasocial relationships, and identification with media characters and celebrities to achieve desirable health‐related outcomes, including decreased stigma for health issues, health‐related information seeking, and increased intentions to seek out specialized health services. However, each of these phenomena has been defined and operationalized inconsistently throughout health communication research, creating a need for improved conceptual clarity in future research.
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