A mechanism or tactic · 1960 · Politics
The political parasocial
Support for a politician structured as a personal bond rather than a policy preference, in a way that transfers poorly across candidates.
The oldest public parasocial bond is the sovereign, and it is the one the field has consistently declined to study. A stadium and a parliament are the same room with different seating plans.
Consideration. The part where somebody stops and thinks. The research, the diagnosis, the ethics, the lawsuits, the regulators. Roughly fifty years of arguing with itself about whether this is a relationship.
Application. One-sided attachment put to work on purpose. Creator economies, community, fandom as infrastructure, and the things that genuinely help people. Not automatically good - a tool with an obvious use is a tool that will also get a bad one.
Where it sits
1950 1950-1999 · 1960 1999
Provenance · 1 source record(s)
- unverifiedNo specific claim is recorded against this source. The record is a pointer to the work in general; the entry's own prose is the argument and is not sourced line by line.Spectator Australia, 2026
Connected · 3 out, 2 in
Reported as a story
It sits in