Interaction in Audience-Participation Shows

Abstract

Television audience-participation programs are systems of social interaction involving both audiences and performers. Three modes of interaction-personal, parasocial, and vicarious-are found in these systems, and the action can be analyzed in terms of the attribution, assignment, or forcing of status by the participants. It then becomes apparent that both audience and performers exert control over one another's responses, a process which conventional methods of content analysis fail to take into account.