Dannagal G. Young

The Privileged Role of the Late-Night Joke: Exploring Humor's Role in Disrupting Argument Scrutiny

This article explores humors impact on cognitive processing of political messages. Although recent research has pointed to effects of late-night comedy viewing on political attitudes and cognitions (Moy, Xenos, & Hess, 2003; Young, 2004, 2006), scant attention has been paid to the development of a theoretical model to account for these outcomes. This manuscript posits that humor suspends argument scrutiny of the premise of a given text through various cognitive mechanisms involving processing ability and motivation. Four different pathways accounting for humors reduction of argument scrutiny are discussed. Humors reduction of argument scrutiny is tested with an experiment with a three condition between subjects design in which participants engaged in a thought-listing exercise after exposure to either humorous political messages (late-night political jokes) or non-humorous equivalents (unfunny translations of those jokes). Results indicate that humor reduces critical argument scrutiny—in part through the “discounting cue” mechanism. Implications for persuasion are discussed.

Late-Night Comedy as a Gateway to Traditional News: An Analysis of Time Trends in News Attention Among Late-Night Comedy Viewers During the 2004 Presidential Primaries

Recent reports published by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press (2000, 2004) propose that young audiences are abandoning traditional news as a source of election information in favor of late-night comedy programs. However, additional evidence (Young & Tisinger, 2006) suggests that exposure to late-night comedy programming is positively correlated with traditional news exposure. This study extends this body of research by offering evidence that exposure to late-night comedy is associated with increases in attention paid to the presidential campaign in national network and cable news. The analysis uses data collected via the National Annenberg Election Survey during the 2004 presidential primary season, between October 30, 2003, and June 4, 2004. Cross-sectional results demonstrate that viewers of late-night comedy programs—specifically viewers of The Tonight Show with Jay Leno and The Late Show with David Letterman, as well as Comedy Centrals The Daily Show with Jon Stewart—pay more attention to the campaign in national network and cable news than nonviewers, controlling for a variety of factors. An analysis of time trends also reveals that the rate of increase in news attention over the course of the primary season is greater for viewers of Leno or Letterman than for those who do not watch any late-night comedy.

Satire, Punch Lines, and the Nightly News: Untangling Media Effects on Political Participation

Research often collapses programming like The Daily Show, The Colbert Report, The Late Show, and The Tonight Show into one category of programming. However, recent research suggests that both the content and effects of viewing these programs differ. This study separates satire or parody and traditional late-night comedy to examine effects of viewing on political participation. Results suggest that viewing satire or parody has positive and significant effects on political participation through the mediator of political efficacy, as does viewing traditional TV news. However, this relationship is not borne out for viewers of traditional late-night comedy. Implications and directions for future research are discussed.

Humor Complexity and Political Influence: An Elaboration Likelihood Approach to the Effects of Humor Type in The Daily Show with Jon Stewart

The effects of exposure to different types of humor on argument scrutiny were examined in the context of televised messages. A resource allocation hypothesis (Young, 2008) and a discounting cue hypothesis (Nabi, Moyer-Guse, & Byrne, 2007) are discussed and explored. Participants (N = 188) watched clips of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart in which Stewart satirized American policy toward Iraq using either sarcasm (not complex) or irony (complex). Participants were then asked to counterargue these messages. A coding scheme was used to assess the extent of counterargumentation, and attitude change was also assessed based on a pretest/posttest semantic differential scale. Results indicated that irony reduced argument scrutiny on the premises of the messages relative to sarcasm, but no main effect was found for type of humor on attitude shift. Results also indicate a conditional effect of political efficacy, which moderates the effect of humor type on argument scrutiny. Implications for persuasion and public opinion are discussed.

Humor Works in Funny Ways: Examining Satirical Tone as a Key Determinant in Political Humor Message Processing

This multi-experiment study builds upon extant political entertainment theory, testing whether satire type (horatian versus juvenalian) cues varying processing mechanisms (message discounting versus resource allocation), and if consequential differences to argument scrutiny levels or message persuasiveness result. Using novel stimuli (e.g., animated cartoons, study one) and real-world late-night political satire (The Daily Show and The Colbert Report, study two), results suggest that satire type was a key antecedent in political humor message processing. Additionally, the varying mechanisms had differential effects on political argument scrutiny levels and message persuasiveness.

Successful Practices for the Strategic Use of Political Parody and Satire Lessons From the P6 Symposium and the 2012 Election Campaign

On November 28 and 29, 2012, ten scholars of political parody and satire and six parody/viral video producers met at the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania to share their expertise, discuss the democratic uses of parody, and develop a set of strategies to guide the successful use of political parody in generating positive democratic outcomes. The symposium, P6: Professors and Practitioners Pontificate on Political Parody and Persuasion, was cosponsored by the Center for Political Communication at the University of Delaware and funded in part by a grant from the Omidyar Network’s Democracy Fund. The meeting served as a follow-up to the yearlong Annenberg Public Policy Center online project, FlackCheck.org. FlackCheck.org, the sister site to its companion FactCheck.org, is an educational site that uses entertaining visual formats and humor to inform the public and debunk false political claims. The November conference began with a keynote from Trevor Potter, former head of the FEC and lawyer to Stephen Colbert and his satirical—though very real—super PAC, Americans for a Better Tomorrow, Tomorrow.

Political Entertainment and the Press' Construction of Sarah Feylin

In the fall of 2008, the press became fascinated with comedian Tina Feys Saturday Night Live impersonations of vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin. This phenomenon marks an important application of the postmodern journalistic practices of strategy-framing, hyper-personalization, and media meta-coverage. In a hybrid media environment in which the distinction between information and entertainment is obsolete, these journalistic practices can be applied to people and texts that fall outside the traditional political context. The complex dynamics among Palin, Fey, and the press provide an opportunity to move away from a linear model of “effects” toward treatment of the communication cycle itself as the object of inquiry. In this analysis, news coverage of Palin and Fey serves as the textual embodiment of Careys (1989) notion of the “arena of dramatic forces and action” (p. 21) that is the news. Textual analysis is employed to explore how the coverage of Palins campaign featured both Fey and Palin in a strategically framed, hyper-personalized, meta-coverage narrative.

Online emotional appeals and political participation: The effect of candidate affect on mass behavior

The role that emotions play in shaping mass political behavior is increasingly well researched. This study refocuses the debate to explore the effect that the emotions expressed by candidates (target affect) through new media have on participation, rather than the effect of emotions felt by voters (observer affect). A unique experiment embedded in a nationally representative online survey demonstrates that appeals invoking target affect can strongly increase citizens’ political participation both online and offline. Contrary to fears that the use of emotions by political elites will agitate the least knowledgeable citizens, however, the results demonstrate that it is the most politically-engaged citizens who are mobilized by such appeals. These findings have significant implications for our understanding of the participatory consequences of emotional political messages on the Internet.

Fact-Checking Effectiveness as a Function of Format and Tone: Evaluating FactCheck.org and FlackCheck.org:

This experiment explores the role of information format (print vs. video) and tone (humorous–nonhumorous) in shaping message interest and belief correction in the context of political fact-checking (N = 525). To understand the mechanisms by which audience misperceptions may be reduced, this experiment tests the belief-correcting effectiveness of a humorous fact-checking video produced by Flackcheck.org, a long-form FactCheck.org print article on the same topic, a nonhumorous video debunking the same set of claims, an unrelated humorous video, and a non-stimulus control group. Mediating psychological mechanisms (message interest, counterargumentation, message discounting) and message perceptions (message confusion) are explored. Results suggest video (humorous or nonhumorous) is an effective way to reduce audience misperceptions by increasing message attention and reducing confusion.

Campaign News Genres, Audience Characteristics, and Media Perceptions A Field Experiment

This study builds on theories of “relative hostile media perceptions” to assess how audience characteristics and the ideological content of programming interact to shape media perceptions across different news genres. It uses a field experiment in which participants were randomly assigned to watch coverage of the 2012 Iowa Republican caucuses on broadcast network evening news (ABC World News), a conservative-oriented political talk show (Fox News Channel’s Hannity), or a political satire show (Comedy Central’s The Daily Show with Jon Stewart). Partisanship and age shaped evaluations of coverage across these different genres: Partisans held more favorable views of news aligned with their own views, older participants favored network news, and younger participants favored political comedy. Additionally, viewing network news or political satire—but not conservative opinion talk—fostered more positive evaluations of the news media in general. The results illuminate how viewers form media perceptions in an increasingly fragmented media landscape.