Is Listening Enough?

Podcast Categories, Listening Practices and Parasocial Interaction

Abstract

This study examines the associations between podcast-category selection, listening practices, and podcast-related parasocial engagement among 340 listeners. Parasocial engagement was measured with an eight-item podcast-context adaptation of the Parasocial Interaction Scale. A two-model hierarchical multiple linear regression estimated associations for interview/guest-based, narrative/storytelling, personal development, and comedy/talk category selection with an adapted PSI score; Model 2 also included listening frequency, listening duration, gender, age group, and education. In addition, the open-ended responses of the survey were inspected through an exploratory Sentence-BERT analysis that combined cosine similarity, k-means clustering, and human theme labelling with illustrative quotations. Interview/guest-based selection was positively associated with the adapted PSI score in both models. Narrative/storytelling selection was significant only before adjustment, while personal development and comedy/talk selection were not significant. Listening frequency showed a modest positive association; duration and demographic variables did not. The text analysis yielded four provisional themes and suggested only partial semantic proximity across theme centroids. We consider that component to be exploratory rather than confirmatory. Taken as a whole, the results offer a cautious, association-based account of podcastrelated parasocial engagement in which theoretically familiar ideas such as the host’s presence, conversational exchange, and narrative continuity remain in an interpretative rather than a causal role.