ABSTRACT
Recently, the realization that individual variations exist among audience members has prompted a more in-depth consideration of the television experience. Using a combination of qualitative and quantitative methodologies, researchers have started to explore how television viewers build relationships, loyalty, and connections with “their” shows, with the characters portrayed in the story lines, and with fellow audience members. In this chapter, we review the existing work on these more complex conceptualizations of television consumption and provide an overview of Television Connectedness. We present a conceptual model illustrating the types of relationships represented by connectedness and propose a series of theoretical propositions relating connectedness to various aspects of the psychology of the consumption of television programming.
