New media platforms display politicians’ interactions with people from a variety of social categories. Previous research shows that observers could vicariously experience parasocial intimacy toward a public figure by identifying with a surrogate—an individual who directly interacts with the public figure and who is considered an ingroup member by the observer based on a salient social category (Dai & Walther, 2018). Developments in the social identity literature call for further examination of this surrogacy effect in contexts where multiple social categories are activated as bases upon which observers identify with surrogates. Through two experiments involving a total sample of 1,068 participants, this research demonstrates that when a surrogate’s identity is presented as different combinations of political affiliation (democratic or republican) and social status (ordinary voter or politician), the more categories observers share in common with the surrogate, the more they identify with the surrogate, and thereby experiences greater parasocial intimacy toward a politician who is seen replying to the surrogate on Twitter. These findings extend previous findings on a social identification-based mechanism of the surrogacy effect and inform online impression management practices of politician.
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