The Daily Show Effect

Abstract

We test the effects of a popular televised source of political humor for young Americans: The Daily Show With Jon Stewart. We find that participants exposed to jokes about George W. Bush and John Kerry on The Daily Show tended to rate both candidates more negatively, even when controlling for partisanship and other demographic variables. Moreover, we find that viewers exhibit more cynicism toward the electoral system and the news media at large. Despite these negative reactions, viewers of The Daily Show reported increased confidence in their ability to understand the complicated world of politics. Our findings are significant in the burgeoning field of research on the effects of “soft news” on the American public. Although research indicates that soft news contributes to democratic citizenship in America by reaching out to the inattentive public, our findings indicate that The Daily Show may have more detrimental effects, driving down support for political institutions and leaders among those already inclined toward nonparticipation.

Selecting Serious or Satirical, Supporting or Stirring News? Selective Exposure to Partisan versus Mockery News Online Videos

“…This phenomenon may be a cause either for hope or concern-on the one hand, such political information embedded in entertainment could serve as a gateway and trigger greater interest in political topics and discourse among otherwise disengaged or alienated segments of the electorate (e.g., Bartsch & Schneider, 2014;Feldman & Young, 2008;Xenos & Becker, 2009). On the other hand, it may contribute to trivialization of political topics as a matter of amusement or peripheral importance, or possibly increase alienation and cynicism (Balmas, 2012;Baumgartner & Morris, 2006;Guggenheim, Kwak, & Campbell, 2011). There is consensus, however, that such political entertainment is not without effects.…”

“…Specifically, the wide popularity of satire news (e.g., Mitchell, Gottfried, Kiley, & Matsa, 2014) has garnered much scholarly attention: Viewers acquire political information from watching these shows (e.g., Hardy, Gottfried, Winneg, & Jamieson, 2014) and may benefit in their internal political efficacy (Baumgartner & Morris, 2006;Becker, 2011), thus assessing their own ability to understand and influence politics more positively. Both these outcomes are highly desirable in terms of fostering political engagement, which underlines satirical news exposure's societal relevance and importance for communication science.…”

“…Scholars studying political entertainment have taken particular interest in internal political efficacy (e.g., Becker, 2014) because it is a key factor in political engagement and behavior (Kenski & Stroud, 2006). Several studies (Baumgartner & Morris, 2006;Becker, 2011) found satirical news exposure positively related to internal political efficacy. Hence, H4 postulates such an impact for selective exposure.…”

Infoentretenimiento satírico en México: el caso de Brozo, el Payaso Tenebroso

“…Some critics have called these programs "neo-modern journalism" (Baym, 2005) or new types of "public journalism" (Faina, 2012), while others accuse it of promoting cynicism rather than civic engagement (Hart & Hartelius, 2007). Beyond the intense debate about the real effects in the audience (Amarasingam, 2011;Baumgartner & Morris, 2006;Feldman, 2013;Holbert, Lambe, Dudo & Carlton, 2007;Cao, 2010;Young, 2013), the existence and success of international cases of satirical Infotainment in countries as diverse as Australia (Harrington, 2012), Romania (Bardan, 2012), Germany (Kleinen -von Königslöw & Keel, 2012), Italy (Cosentino, 2012), India (Kumar, 2012) or Iran (Semati, 2012) give an account that this hybrid genre is globally consolidated as one of the main ways of political communication. Despite the importance of the global phenomenon of satirical Infotainment , works on Latin American cases are still emerging.…”

Trumping Tropes with Joke(r)s:The Daily Show“Plays the Race Card”

“…The literature on TDS examines the show as an exemplar of the blurred lines between comedy, news, and journalism (Baym, 2005(Baym, , 2010Hess, 2011), "political culture jamming" (Warner, 2007), the confluence of entertainment and political engagement (Baumgartner & Morris, 2006;Jones, 2010), of critiquing "whiteness" (Purtle & Steffensmeier, 2011), of preserving critical publics via satirical dissent (Day, 2011), and so on. We assert, specifically, that TDS troubles the controversies that constitute racial injustice and complicates racial discourse in an avowedly post-racial era.…”