Call for papers: Getting involved

• Nathan Walter, Northwestern Universityopens in new window
• Rebecca Tukachinsky Forster, Chapman University (Guest editor) opens in new window

• Deadline for full-length manuscript submissions: May 1, 2027
• Anticipated publication: July 2028

Twenty-five years ago, Jonathan Cohen’s foundational work on identification with media characters[1] helped transform how communication and psychology scholars understand the relationship between audiences and the characters they encounter through media. By distinguishing identification from related experiences such as liking, similarity, and parasocial interaction, Cohen offered a conceptual vocabulary that would profoundly influence media psychology scholarship.

In the following decades, scholarship on identification and character engagement flourished, with researchers examining why people identify with some characters and not others, how these experiences shape persuasion, learning, emotion, and enjoyment, and how they intersect with other forms of media engagement, morality, identity, and a host of other social and psychological experiences. Yet despite this substantial body of work, fundamental questions about involvement with characters remain as generative as ever. What distinguishes identification from adjacent forms of character involvement? When do these experiences overlap, and when should they remain conceptually distinct? Who identifies, with whom, under what circumstances, and with what consequences? And do theories developed primarily around film and television adequately capture relationships with characters in contemporary media environments?

 We welcome theory-driven empirical and methodological submissions that build on, challenge, or revise existing understandings of identification and related forms of character engagement. We are particularly interested in research that moves beyond demonstrating established relationships to identify boundary conditions, resolve conceptual ambiguities, test underlying mechanisms, or reconsider assumptions that are taken for granted.

Relevant topics include, but are not limited to, the following:

• Antecedents and boundary conditions of character engagement. Research has identified numerous characteristics of media users, characters, narratives, and media-use contexts that facilitate identification and related forms of engagement. We are particularly interested in work that brings greater theoretical precision to these relationships by identifying boundary conditions, interactions among antecedents, or circumstances under which established relationships change or disappear.
• Consequences of character engagement. Identification and related forms of involvement have been linked to persuasion, learning, emotion, enjoyment, social perceptions, attitudes, and behavior. However, much of the research has been conducted using cross-sectional data or has assessed outcomes immediately after exposure. Relevant submissions could clarify the processes underlying these effects by identifying conditions under which engagement produces different or opposing outcomes, employing longitudinal data to assess the directionality of these effects, or examining consequences that persist beyond immediate media exposure.
• Conceptual boundaries among forms of character involvement. Identification belongs to a larger family of experiences that includes parasocial interaction and relationships, liking, perceived similarity, wishful identification, attachment, narrative engagement, transportation, and other forms of involvement. We welcome research examining where these constructs converge and diverge, whether established distinctions remain theoretically useful, and how different forms of involvement operate together.
• Dynamics of character engagement over time. Involvement with characters often develops across episodes, seasons, years, and even decades, yet we know relatively little about how these experiences unfold over extended periods. Relevant submissions might examine how identification and related experiences emerge, accumulate, change, or disappear through repeated exposure, character development, parasocial relationship formation and dissolution, or other processes that unfold over time.
• Methodological advances in measuring character engagement. Most research continues to rely on retrospective self-report measures administered after exposure. We encourage studies using online or continuous self-report, behavioral measures, psychophysiological approaches, computational methods, experience sampling, longitudinal designs, or other methodological innovations that offer new ways of capturing character engagement as it occurs. We are especially interested in approaches that demonstrate how methodological advances can help answer important theoretical questions about the processes underlying character engagement and its effects.
• Character engagement in changing media environments. We welcome work examining whether established theories of identification and character involvement extend to interactive narratives, video games, social media, virtual and augmented environments, artificial intelligence, and other media contexts in which distinctions among audience member, character, and social actor may require reconsideration.

All social scientific methodological approaches suited to the research questions or hypotheses are welcome, including, but not limited to, content analysis, surveys, experiments, mixed-methods approaches, and meta-analyses. Studies may focus on any form of popular media, including television/streaming content, film, online video platforms, video games, podcasts, and emerging media (e.g., virtual and augmented reality, gamified social experiences).

We encourage authors to follow research transparency practices and apply for badges for preregistration and open data.

The manuscripts must be no longer than 30 pages, inclusive of everything (e.g., references, figures, tables, title page, and appendices). Authors may include unlimited supplemental materials to be posted electronically. Manuscripts should include abstracts of up to 250 words and a public policy relevance statement.

 The manuscripts should adhere to the journal’s general submission guidelines and should be submitted through the submission portal by May 1, 2027.

Should you have any questions, please contact the coeditors directly.