Medium as social actor within medium

Details:

The definitions under this heading explicitly involve technology; the phenomenon is a subjective property of an individual person; the source of the stimuli in the experience is only external (outside the body); and there is an inaccurate perceptioon that technology is not involved in the experience when it is; and the aspect of the phenonenon that is of primary interest is related to social entitites (human, electronic and otherwise), specifically perceptions that media and/or elements of media themselves are social entities.

Sample defintion(s):

Nass & Steuer (1993):
"[I]nteractions with technologies that possess social characteristicis may best be thought of as phenomena in the domain of interpersonal communication."

Kumar, & Benbasat (2002):
"Para-social presence refers to the extent to which a medium facilitates a sense of understanding, connection, involvement and interaction among participating social entities. We make a case for treating a web site as a valid social actor and argue that the relationship between a web site and her visitors should be characterized in much the same way one would characterize an inter-personal relationship." (abstract)