Moral injury and the cost of a parasocial society
According to a 2023 essay in the Atlantic by a Harvard happiness researcher, the term parasocial interaction has a specific origin. As the essay notes, “The term parasocial interaction was introduced in the 1950s by the social scientists Donald Horton and R. Richard Wohl.” In their groundbreaking 1956 paper, Horton and Wohl open with a now-familiar observation. One of the striking characteristics of the new mass media, radio, …
Moral injury and the cost of a parasocial society
