CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2015
| Author | Rogovich, Tatiana Vladimirovna |
|---|---|
| Title | The Impact of Late-Night Comedy on Citizens' Political Knowledge in a Hybrid Media Environment: Distraction or Facilitator? |
| Summary | It has been established that late-night comedy audience have specific patterns of media consumption involving exposure to both satirical and traditional news coverage. However, evidence of interaction effects of the exposure to late-night comedy and hard news is very limited. Even though political communication scholars embrace the framework of a hybrid political media environment assuming that individuals engage multiple news sources, still very little is said about the influence that late-night comedy might have on the information acquisition from traditional coverage. In this thesis, I explore the gaps in the research on political satire and access the questions whether exposure of an individual to the different types of political coverage may have consequences for his or her ability to learn from it. I pose my research questions and hypotheses based on previous findings from both late-night comedy and psychology of humor research. I suggest that watching a late-night comedy segment might have a positive as well as negative impact on the learning from traditional coverage depending on the circumstances of the exposure. The experiment was conducted on a sample of U.S. adults to reveal differences in factual information acquisition between individuals exposed to several sequences of news items including or excluding The Daily Show segment. Data analyses revealed no significant hypothesized differences between treatments, but individuals in the experimental conditions involving exposure to a late-night comedy segment scored significantly better on all knowledge items than participants in the control group and comparably with participants exposed to a news clip. Moreover, patterns in data consistent with Attention hypothesis were observed. This research provides a foundation for a further research on effects that late-night comedy might have on the information acquisition from traditional coverage. |
| Supervisor | Toka, Gabor |
| Department | Political Science MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2015/rogovich_tatiana.pdf |
Visit the CEU Library.
© 2007-2021, Central European University