Interactions - May/June 2010

OPINION Ps AnD Qs
ers Cristel Russell, Andrew
Norman, and Susan Heckler
conducted a validation of the
connectedness scale that exam-
ined the extended contribution
around a series of constructs—
attitude (degree of favor or
disfavor), involvement (mental
state during viewing), and over-
all viewing (time spent overall
in the medium). Their model,
albeit particularly focused on
TV and media events, offers
six overarching dimensions,
some of which perhaps could be
extended to the world of digital
and physical products and espe-
cially to media products:
• escape (immersion into the
event)
• fashion (the extent to which
the viewer is influenced by the
characters’ appearance)
• imitation (the inclination to
imitate the characters’ behavior
or speech patterns)
• modeling (the degree to
which individuals relate their
lives to the lives of characters)
• aspiration (aspiring to actu-
ally be on the show or meet the
characters)
• paraphernalia (the degrees
to which people collect items to
bring the show into their real
world)
As connectedness increases,
so does frequency of show-
related social interaction with
others, the development of rela-
tionships within the community
of co-viewers, and the size of
the viewers’ social network of
co-consumers. People also have
a greater memory for the char-
acters and storylines, and surely
this kind of memory is key to
long-term engagement as well
as in-the-moment engagement.
So this offers a much deeper
sense of overall engagement,
and a measure that moves
beyond immediate activi-
ties into activities beyond the
screen, mouse, click, and brand
awareness into behavior and
identity. Indeed, consumption,
participation, and identification
are key.

About the Author Elizabeth Churchill is a principal research scientist at Yahoo! Research leading research in social media. Originally a psychologist by training, for the past 15 years she has studied and designed technologies for effective social connection. At Yahoo, her work focuses on how Internet applications and services are woven into everyday lives. Obsessed with memory and sentiment, in her spare time Churchill researches how people manage their digital and physical archives. Churchill rates herself a packrat, her greatest joy is an attic stuffed with memorabilia.