My name is Bozena and I am graduating from Cyberpsychology MSc course at IADT. I have MA degree in Rehabilitation Education with a specialisation in working with people living with addiction. I work in operations for a company that provides data protection and cybersecurity services. My interest in Cyberpsychology aligns with my professional and educational background - I am fascinated in the human side of technology and the psychology behind it.
This study aimed to investigate how intimate self-disclosure impacts viewers' perceptions of the credibility and relatedness of social media influencers and how it impacts the formation of parasocial relationships.
My project aimed to explore how intimate self-diclosure used by social media influencers contributes to the formation of parasocial relationships with their followers, and if sharing intimate pesonal information, can affect credibility and relatedness of social media influencers.
I used data scraped from comments under publicly available YouTube videos and employed qualitative design, including thematic analysis of the text of comments and content analysis of emojis.
The results suggest that intimate self-diclosure influences followers' perceptions of the relatedness and credibility of social media influencers. Intimate self-disclosure supports the occurrence of parasocial relationships. However, it is unclear if this can be attributed to the fact if the disclosure is positive or negative. The findings support existing knowledge on Self-Determination Theory and Parasocial Relationships Theory assumptions.
A qualitative exploration of the impact of intimate self-disclosure on parasocial relationships, perceived credibility, and relatedness of social media influencers