Podcasts offer a platform for politicians to reach diverse audiences. This project explores the impact of presidential candidates appearing on podcasts, focusing on how these guests affected the parasocial relationships between listeners and hosts. We examined publicly available comments (n = 71,248) on 29 podcasts’ official Instagram accounts following Trump’s or Harris’ appearance on the podcast. Using NLP methods we found that rejection and support were mostly directed toward the host, not the candidate. The former suggests a breakdown in the PSR when listeners’ and hosts’ views clash, while the latter indicates that the relationship could be strengthened if views align.
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Hewitt et al. (2026) studied this question.
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