Identification

Identification with media characters is a key component of viewers' propensity to become engaged (→ Transportation Theory) and involved in media content (→ Involvement with Media Content). Identification is an imaginative process that is evoked as a response to characters presented in mediated texts, whereby → audiences feel as if they are part of the world depicted by the mediated text (→ Media and Perceptions of Reality). When identifying with characters, audience members experience the events described by the plot not as external viewers, but rather from the perspective of the character with which they identify, and as if they were part of the story. Zillmann (2002) argues that because viewers often respond to characters they are obviously responding to them as witnesses (i.e., experiencing them from the outside), but this criticism is valid only if one assumes that the responses to characters are constant over time and across viewers and can take only one form. Most likely, identification and other forms of response (such as → parasocial interaction and relationships) are intertwined and people move in and out of these varying forms as they view (Wilson 1993).