This essay examines the presence of parasocial relationships in the comments of one k-pop girl group’s and one k-pop boy group’s vlog series on YouTube with the intent to compare and examine if the way parasocial relationships are expressed differentiates if the artist in question is a man or a woman. By the study of the two comment sections this essay intends to contribute with insights about the phenomenon of parasocial relationships from a feminist perspective. The data is examined by combining a quantitative and a qualitative method. The first step is a quantitive content analysis with which we collect and code 100 comments from each video with the purpose of mapping out the general themes of the comments and to sort out the comments which will be analysed in the next step. In the next step a qualitative linguistic analysis is used to find the main themes of the comments which express parasocial relationships. This step enables a deeper analysis and understanding of the comments which express parasocial relationships and to be able to compare the results these comments are coded as well. The results of both codings are presented in the form of charts and tables.
The findings suggest that there is a slight difference between how people express parasocial relationships towards men and women. The comments under the female artists vlog were significantly shorter and had in general less comments that suggested parasocial relationships. The female artists comment section also showed the least amount of identification with the artist, less belonging and more intimacy compared to the male artists comment section.