People can develop close relationships with media figures viewed on television. Across two studies we examined the extent to which satisfaction with, alternatives to, and investments in such parasocial relationships (PSR) account for feelings of commitment toward favored television characters. In Study 1, satisfaction and investments positively predicted commitment to fictional television chara...

Realists about fictional characters posit a certain theoretical role and candidate to fill this role. I will delineate the realists take like Emma Woodhouse fill, argue that it is better filled by what call ‘characterisations’. In explaining mean ‘characterisations’, show existence of these entities comparatively uncontroversial. should acknowledge their existence, but doing so, argue, obviates...

Recently, a number of authors have suggested that we understand scientific models in the same way as fictional characters, like Sherlock Holmes. The biggest challenge for this approach concerns the ontology of fictional characters. I consider two responses to this challenge, given by Roman Frigg, Ronald Giere and Peter Godfrey-Smith, and argue that neither is successful. I then suggest an alter...

In this paper we explore the correlation between the sound of words and their meaning, by testing if the polarity (‘good guy’ or ‘bad guy’) of a character’s role in a work of fiction can be predicted by the name of the character in the absence of any other context. Our approach is based on phonological and other features proposed in prior theoretical studies of fictional names. These features a...

Our task is to produce test data for a research program developing a new generation of insider threat detection technologies. Test data is created by injecting fictional malicious activity into a background of real user activity. We rely on fictional narratives to specify threats that simulate realistic social complexity, with “drama as data” as a central organizing metaphor. Test cases are scr...